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WILEY AND PUTNAM'S 

7 

LIBRARY OF 

CHOICE READING. 



THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 



THE GENIUS, 



CHARACTER OF BURNS 

BY PROFESSOR WILSON. 
A M 

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, 

author of the lights and shadows of scottish 

life; the recollections of Christopher 

north, etc., etc. 






NEW-YORK : 

WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY. 

1845. 



ON THE 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS, 



BY PROFESSOR WILSON. 



Burns is by far the greatest poet that ever sprung from the 
bosom of the people, and lived and died in an humble condition. 
Indeed, no country in the world but Scotland could have pro- 
duced such a man ; and he will be for ever regarded as the 
glorious representative of the genius of his country. He was 
born a poet, if ever man was, and to his native genius alone is 
owing the perpetuity of his fame. For he manifestly had never 
very deeply studied poetry as an art, nor reasoned, much about 
its principles, nor looked abroad with the wide ken. of intellect 
for objects and subjects on which to pour out his inspiration. 
The condition of the peasantry of Scotland, the happiest, per- 
haps, that providence ever allowed to the children of labor, was 
not surveyed and speculated on by him as the field of poetry, 
hut as the field of his own existence ; and he chronicled the 
events that passed there, not merely as food for his imagination 
as a poet, but as food for his heart as a man. Hence, when 
inspired to compose poetry, poetry came gushing up from the 
well of his human afFections, and he had nothing more to do, 
than to pour it, like streams irrigating a meadow, in many a 
cheerful tide over the drooping flowers and fading verdure of 
life. Imbued with vivid perceptions, warm feelings, and strong 
2 



THE GENIUS AND 



passions, he sent his own existence into that of all things, 
animate and inanimate, around him ; and not an occurrence in 
hamlet, village, or town, affecting in any way the happiness of 
the human heart, but roused as keen an interest in the soul of 
Burns, and as genial a sympathy, as if it had immediately con- 
cerned himself and his own individual welfare. Most other 
poets of rural life have looked on it through the aerial veil of 
imagination — often beautified, no doubt, by such partial conceal- 
ment, and beaming with a misty softness more delicate than the 
truth. But Burns would not thus indulge his fancy where he 
had felt — felt so poignantly, all the agonies and all the trans- 
ports of life. He looked around him, and when he saw the 
smoke of the cottage rising up quietly and unbroken to heaven, 
he knew, for he had seen and blessed it, the quiet joy and un- 
broken contentment that slept below ; and when he saw it 
driven and dispersed by the winds, he knew also but too well 3 
for too sorely had he felt them, those agitations and disturbances 
which had shook him till he wept on his chaff bed. In reading 
his poetry, therefore, we know what unsubstantial dreams are 
all those of the golden age. But bliss beams upon us with a 
more subduing brightness through the dim melancholy that 
shrouds lowly life ; and when the peasant Burns rises up in his 
might as Burns the poat, and is seen to derive all that might 
from the life which at this hour the peasantry of Scotland are 
leading, our hearts leap within us, because that such is our 
country, and such the nobility of her children. There is no 
delusion, no affectation, no exaggeration, no falsehood in the 
spirit of Burns's poetry. He rejoices like an untamed enthu- 
siast, and he weeps like a prostrate penitent. In joy and in 
grief the whole man appears : some of his finest effusions were 
poured out before he left the fields of his childhood, and when 
he scarcely hoped for other auditors than his own heart, and the 
simple dwellers of the hamlet. He wrote not to please or sur- 
prise others — we speak of those first effusions — but in his own 
creative delight ; and even after he had discovered his power to 
kindle the sparks of nature wherever they slumbered, the effect 
to be produced seldom seems to have been considered by him, 
assured that his poetry could not fail to produce the same pas- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 



sion in the hearts of other men from which it boiled over in his 
own. Out of himself, and beyond his own nearest and dearest 
concerns, he well could, but he did not much love often or long 
to go. His imagination wanted not wings broad and strong for 
highest flights. But he was most at home when walking on this 
earth, through this world, even along the banks and braes of the 
streams of Coila. It seems as if his muse were loth to admit 
almost any thought, feeling, image, drawn from any other region 
than his native district — the hearth-stone of his father's hut — 
the still or troubled chamber of his own generous and passionate 
bosom. Dear to him the jocund laughter of the reapers on the 
corn-field, the tears and sighs which his own strains had won 
from the children of nature enjoying the mid-day hour of rest 
beneath the shadow of the hedgerow tree. With what pathetic 
personal power, from all the circumstances of his character and 
condition, do many of his humblest lines affect us ! Often, too 
often, as we hear him singing, we think that we see him suffer- 
ing ! " Most musical, most melancholy" he often is, even in his 
merriment ! In him, alas ! the transports of inspiration are but 
too closely allied with reality's kindred agonies ! The strings 
of his lyre sometimes yield their finest music to the sighs of 
remorse or repentance. Whatever, therefore, be the faults or 
defects of the poetry of Burns— and no doubt it has many— it 
has, beyond all that ever was written, this greatest of all merits, 
intense, life-pervading, and life-breathing truth. 

There is probably not a human being come to the years of 
understanding in all Scotland, who has not heard of the name 
of Robert Burns. It is, indeed, a household word. His poems 
are found lying in almost every cottage in the country, on the 
" window sole " of the kitchen, spence, or parlor ; and in the 
town-dwellings of the industrious poor, if books belong to the 
family at all, you are pretty sure to see there the dear Ayrshire 
Ploughman. The father or mother, born and long bred, per- 
haps, among banks and braes, possesses, in that small volume, 
a talisman that awakens in a moment all the sweet visions of 
the past, and that can crowd the dim abode of hard-working 
poverty, with a world of dear rural remembrances that awaken 
not repining but contentment. 



THE GENIUS AND 



No poet ever lived more constantly and more intimately in 
the hearts of a people. With their mirth, or with their melan- 
choly, how often do his " native wood-notes wild" affect the 
sitters by the ingles of low-roofed homes, till their hearts over- 
flow with feelings that place them on a level, as moral creatures, 
with the most enlightened in the land, and more than reconcile 
them with, make them proud of, the condition assigned them by 
Providence ! There they see with pride the reflection of the 
character and condition of their own order. That pride is one 
of the best natural props of poverty ; for, supported by it, the 
poor envy not the rich. They exult to know and to feel that 
they have had treasures bequeathed to them by one of them- 
selves — treasures of the heart, the intellect, the fancy, and the 
imagination, of which the possession and the enjoyment are one 
and the same, as long as they preserve their integrity and their 
independence. The poor man, as he speaks of Robert Burns, 
always holds up his head and regards you with an elated look. 
A tender thought of the " Cottar's Saturday Night," or a bold 
thought of " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," may come across 
him ; and he who in such a spirit loves home and country, by 
whose side may he not walk an equal in the broad eye of clay 
as it shines over our Scottish hills ? This is true popularity. 
Thus interpreted, the word sounds well, and recovers its ancient 
meaning. The land " made blithe with plough and harrow," — 
the broomy or the heathery braes — -the holms by the river's side 
— the forest where the woodman's ringing axe no more disturbs 
the cushat — the deep dell where all day long sits solitary plaided 
boy or girl watching the kine or the sheep — the moorland hut 
without any garden— the lowland cottage, whose garden glows 
like a very orchard, when crimsoned with fruit-blossoms most 
beautiful to behold — the sylvan homestead sending its reek aloft 
over the huge sycamore that blackens on the hill-side — the 
straw-roofed village gathering with small bright crofts its many 
white gable-ends round and about the modest manse, and the 
kirk-spire covered with the pine-tree that-shadows its horologe — 
the small, quiet, half-slated half-thatched rural town, — there 
resides, and will for ever reside, the immortal genius of Burns. 
Oh, that he, the prevailing Poet, could have seen this light 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 



breaking in upon the darkness that did too long and too deeply 
overshadow his lot ! Some glorious glimpses of it his prophetic 
soul did see ; witness " The Vision," or that somewhat humbler 
but yet high strain, in which, bethinking him of the undefined 
aspirations of his boyhood he said to himself — 

" Even then a wish, I mind its power, 
A wish that to my latest hour, 

Shall strongly heave my breast, 
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some useful plan or book would make, 

Or sing a sang at least ! 

• 6 The rough bur-thistle spreading wide* 
Amang the bearded bear, 
I turned the weeder-clips aside 
And spared the symbol dear." 

Such hopes were with him in his " bright and shining youth," 
surrounded as it was with toil and trouble that could not bend 
his brow from its natural upward inclination to the sky \ and 
such hopes, let us doubt it not, were also with him in his dark 
and faded prime, when life's lamp burned low indeed, and he 
was willing at last, early as it was, to shut his eyes on this 
dearly beloved but sorely distracting world. 

With what strong and steady enthusiasm is the anniversary of 
Burns's birth-day celebrated, not only ail over his own native 
land, but in every country to which an adventurous spirit has 
carried her sons ! On such occasions, nationality is a virtue. 
For what else is the " Memory of Burns," but the memory of 
all that dignifies and adorns the region that gave him birth ? 
Not till that region is shorn of all its beams — its honesty, its 
independence, its moral worth, its genius, and its piety, will the 
name of Burns 

" Die on her ear, a faint unheeded sound." 

But it has an immortal life in the hearts of young and old, 
whether sitting at gloaming by the ingle-side, or on the stone 
seat in the open air, as the sun is going down, or walking among 
the summer mists on the mountain, or the blinding winter snows. 



THE GENIUS AND 



In the life of the poor there is an unchanging and a preserving 
spirit. The great elementary feelings of human nature there 
disdain fluctuating fashions ; there pain and pleasure are alike 
permanent in their outward shows as in their inward emotions ; 
there the language of passion never grows obsolete ; and at the 
same passage you hear the child sobbing at the knee of her 
grandame whose old eyes are somewhat dimmer than usual 
with a haze that seems almost to be of tears. Therefore, the 
poetry of Burns will continue to charm, as long as Nith 
flows, Criflel is green, and the bonny blue of the sky of Scot- 
land meets with that in the eyes of her maidens, as they walk 
up and down her hills silent or singing to kirk or market. 

Let us picture to ourselves the Household in which Burns* 
grew up to manhood, shifting its place without much changing 
its condition, from first to last always fighting against fortune, 
experiencing the evil and the good of poverty, and in the sight 
of men obscure. His father may be said to have been an elderly 
man when Robert was born, for he was within a few years of 
forty, and had always led a life of labor ; and labor it is that 
wastes away the stubbornest strength — among the tillers of the 
earth a stern ally of time. " His lyart haffets wearing thin and 
bare " at an age when many a forehead hardly shows a wrinkle, 
and when thick locks cluster darkly round the temples of easy 
living men. The sire who " turns o'er wi' patriarchal pride the 
big Ha-Bible," is indeed well-stricken in years, but he is not an 
old man, for 

"The expectant wee things toddlin', stacher through 

To meet their dad wi' flichterin' noise and glee ; 

His wee bit ingle, blinking bonnily ; 

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile, 

The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 

Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, 
And makes him quite forget his labor and his toil." 

That picture, Burns, as all the world knows, drew from his 
father. He was himself, in imagination, again one of the " wee 
things " that ran to meet him ; and " the priest-like father " had 
long worn that aspect before the poet's eyes, though he died be- 
fore he was threescore. " I have always considered William 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 



Burnes," says the simple-minded, tender-hearted Murdoch, " as 
by far the best of the human race that ever I had the pleasure 
of being acquainted with, and many a worthy character I have 
known. He was a tender and affectionate father • he took plea- 
sure in leading his children in the paths of virtue, not in driving 
them, as some people do, to the performance of duties to which 
they themselves are averse. He took care to find fault very 
seldom ; and, therefore, when he did rebuke, he was listened to 
with a kind of reverential awe. I must not pretend to give you 
a description of all the manly qualities, the rational and Chris- 
tian virtues, of the venerable William Burnes. I shall only 
add that he practised every known duty, and avoided everything 
that was criminal ; or, in the apostle's words, c herein did he 
exercise himself, in living a life void of offence towards God 
and towards man. 5 Although I cannot do justice to the char- 
acter of this worthy man, yet you will perceive, from these 
few particulars, what kind of a person had the principal part in 
the education of the poet." Burns was as happy in a mother, 
whom, in countenance, it is said he resembled ; and as sons and 
daughters were born, we think of the " auld clay biggin " more 
and more alive with cheerfulness and peace. 

His childhood, then, was a happy one, secured from all evil 
influences and open to all good, in the guardianship of religious 
parental love. Not a boy in Scotland had a better education. 
For a few months, when in his sixth year, he was at a small 
school at Alloway Miln, about a mile from the house in which 
he was born ; and for two years after under the tuition of good 
John Murdoch, a young scholar whom William Burnes and four 
or five neighbors engaged to supply the place of the school- 
master, who had been removed to another situation, lodging him, 
as is still the custom in some country places, by turns in their 
own houses. " The earliest composition I recollect taking 
pleasure in, was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, 
beginning 'How are thy servants Mess' 'd, O Lord ! ' I particu- 
larly remember one half stanza which was music to my boyish 
ear, 

e For though on dreadful whirls we hang, 
High on the broken wave.' 



8 THE GENIUS AND 



I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my 
school-books. The two first books I ever read in print, and 
which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read 
since, were the Life of Hannibal, and the History of Sir William 
Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I 
used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum 
and bagpipe, and wished myself tall enough to be a soldier; 
while the story of Wallace poured a tide of Scottish prejudice 
into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of 
life shut in eternal rest." And speaking of the same period and 
books to Mrs. Dunlop, he says, " For several of my earlier years 
I had few other authors ; and many a solitary hour have I stole 
out, after the laborious vocations of the day, to shed a tear over 
their glorious but unfortunate stories. In these boyish days, I 
remember, in particular, being struck with that part of Wal- 
lace's story, where these lines occur— 

1 Syne to the Leglen wood, when it was late, 
To make a silent and a safe retreat.' 

I chose a fine summer Sunday, the only day my line of life 
allowed, and walked half a dozen miles to pay my respects to 
the Leglen wood, with as much devou't enthusiasm as ever pil- 
grim did to Loretto ; and explored every den and dell where I 
could suppose my heroic countryman to have lodged." Murdoch 
continued his instructions until the family had been about two 
years at Mount Oliphant, and there being no school near us, 
says Gilbert Burns, and our services being already useful on the 
farm, " my father undertook to teach us arithmetic on the winter 
nights by candle-light ; and in this way my two elder sisters 
received all the education they ever had." Robert was then in 
his ninth year, and had owed much, he tells us, to " an old 
woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, 
credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest 
/ collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, 
ghosts, fairies, brownies, witchies, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, 
elf-candles, dead lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantrips, giants 
and enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cul- 
tivated the latent seeds of poetry • but had so strong an effect 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 



on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles., 
I sometimes keep a sharp look-out on suspicious places ; and 
though nobody can be more sceptical than I am in such matters? 
yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle 
terrors." 

We said, that not a boy in Scotland had a better education 
than Robert Burns, and we do not doubt that you will agree 
with us ; for, in addition to all that may be contained in those 
sources of useful and entertaining knowledge, he had been 
taught to read, not only in the Spelling Book, and Fisher's 
English Grammar, and The Vision of Mirza, and Addison's 
Hymns, and Titus Andronicus (though on Lavinia's entrance 
"with her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out/*' he threatened 
to burn the book) ; but in the New Testament and the Bible, 
and all this in his father's house, or in the houses of the neigh- 
bors ; happy as the day was long, or the night, and in the midst 
of happiness; yet even then, sometimes saddened, no doubt, to 
see something more than solemnity or awfulness on his father's 
face, that was always turned kindly towards the children, but 
seldom wore a smile. 

Wordsworth had these memorials in his mind when he was 
conceiving the boyhood of the Pedlar in his great poem, the 
Excursion. 

" But eagerly he read and read again, 
Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied ; 
The life and death of martyrs, who sustained 
With will inflexible, those fearful pangs 
Triumphantly displayed in records left 
Of persecution, and the covenant, times 
Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour ; 
And there, by lucky hap, had been preserved 
A straggling volume, torn and incomplete, 
That left half-told the preternatural tale, 
Romance of giants, chronicle of fiends, 
Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts 
Strange and uncouth ; dire faces, figures dire, 
Sharp-knee'd, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ancled too, 
With long and ghastly shanks— forms which once seen 
Could never be forgotten. In his heart 
Where fear sate thus, a cherished visitant, 
Was wanting yet the pure delight of love 



10 THE GENIUS AND 



By sound diffused, or by the breathing air, 
Or by the silent looks of happy things, 
Or flowing from the universal face 
Of earth and sky. But he had felt the power 
Of nature, and already was prepared, 
By his intense conceptions, to receive '' 
Deeply the lesson deep of love, which he 
Whom nature, by whatever means, has taught 
To feel intensely, cannot but receive. 
Such was the boy. 

Such was the boy ; but his studies had now to be pursued by 
fits and snatches, and, therefore, the more eagerly and earnestly, 
during the intervals or at the close of labor, that before his thir- 
teenth year had become constant and severe. " The cheerless 
gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave ! " 
These are his own memorable words, and they spoke the truth. 
"For nothing could be more retired/' says Gilbert, "than our 
general manner of living at Mount Oliphant ; we scarcely saw 
any but members of our own family. There were no boys of 
our own age, or near it, in the neighborhood." They all worked 
hard from morning to night, and Robert hardest of them all. At 
fifteen he was the principal laborer on the farm, and relieved his 
father from holding the plough. Two years before he had as- 
sisted in thrashing the crop of corn. The two noble brothers 
saw with anguish the old man breaking down before their eyes; 
nevertheless assuredly, though they knew it not, they were the 
happiest boys "the evening sun went down upon." "True," 
as Gilbert tells us, " I doubt not but the hard labor and sorrow 
of this period of his life was in a great measure the cause of 
that depression of spirits with which Robert was so often afflicted 
through his whole life afterwards. At this time he was almost 
constantly afflicted in the evenings with a dull head-ache, which 
at a future period of his life was exchanged for a palpitation of 
the heart, and a threatening of fainting and suffocation in his 
bed in the night-time." Nevertheless, assuredly both boys 
were happy, and Robert the happier of the two ; for if he had 
not been so, why did he not go to sea ? Because he loved his 
parents too well to be able to leave them, and because, too, it was 
his duty to stay by them, were he to drop down at midnight in 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 11 

the barn and die with the flail in his hand. But if love and duty 
cannot make a boy happy, what can ? Passion, genius, a teem- 
ing brain, a palpitating heart, and a soul of fire. These too 
were his, and idle would have been her tears, had Pity wept for 
young Robert Burns. 

Was he not hungry for knowledge from a child ? During 
these very years he was devouring it; and soon the dawn grew 
day. " My father," says Gilbert, " was for some time the only 
companion we had. He conversed familiarly on all subjects 
with us, as if we had been men ; and was at great pains, while 
we accompanied him in the labors of the farm, to lead the con- 
versation to such subjects as might tend to increase our know- 
ledge, or confirm us in virtuous habits. He borrowed Salmon's 
Geographical Grammar for us, and endeavored to make us ac- 
quainted with the situation and history of the different countries 
in the world ; while from a book society in Ayr, he procured for 
us the reading of Durham's Physico and Astro Theology, and 
Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation. Robert read all these 
books with an avidity and industry scarcely to be equalled. My 
father had been a subscriber to Stackhouse's History of the 
Bible. From this Robert collected a competent knowledge of 
ancient history ; for no book was so voluminous as to slacken his 
industry, or so antiquated as to damp his researches." He kept 
reading too at the Spectator, Pope and Pope's Homer, some plays 
of Shakspeare, Boyle's Lectures, Locke on the Human Under- 
standing, Hervey's Meditations, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of 
Original Sin, the works of Allan Ramsay and Smollet, and A 
.Collection of Songs. " That volume was my Vade Mecum. 
I pored over them, during my work, or walking to labor, song 
by song, verse by verse, carefully noticing the true tender or 
sublime from affectation or fustian ; and I am convinced I owe 
to this practice most of my critic-craft, such as it is." 

So much for book-knowledge ; but what of the kind that is 
born within every boy's own bosom, and grows there till often 
that bosom feels as if it would burst ? To Mr. Murdoch, Gilbert 
always appeared to possess a more lively imagination, and to be 
more of a wit than Robert. Yet imagination or wit he had none. 
His face said, " Mirth, with thee I mean to live ; " yet he was 



12 THE GENIUS AND 



through life sedate. Robert himself says that in childhood he 
was by no means a favorite with anybody— but he must have 
been mistaken ; and " the stubborn sturdy something in his dis- 
position " hindered him from seeing how much he was loved. 
The tutor tells us he had no ear for music, and could not be 
taught a psalm tune ! Nobody could have supposed that he 
was ever to be a poet ! But nobody knew anything about him — 
nor did he know much about himself; till Nature, who had long 
kept, chose to reveal, her own secret. 

" You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman 
together as partners in the labor of harvest. In my fifteenth 
autumn my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger 
than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of 
doing he.* justice in that language ; she was a honnie, sweet, sonsie 
lass. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated 
me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappoint- 
ment, gin-horse prudence, and bookworm philosophy, I hold to 
be the first of human joys, our sweetest blessing here below. 
How she caught the contagion I could not tell : you medical 
people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the 
touch, &c, but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed I did 
not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, 
when returning in the evening from our labors ; why the tones of 
her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Eolian harp ; and 
particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I 
looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel 
nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring quali- 
ties, she sang sweetly ; and it was a favorite reel to which I 
attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so 
presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed 
ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin ; but my girl 
sang a song which was said to be composed by a small country 
laird's son, on one of his father's maids with whom he was in 
love ; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as 
he ; for, excepting that he could smear sheep, and cast peats, 
his father living on the moorlands, he had no more scholar craft 
than myself. Thus with me began Love and Poetry." 

And during those seven years, when his life was " the cheer- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS, 13 

less gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley- 
slave," think ye not that the boy Poet was happy, merely because 
he had the blue sky over his head, and the green earth beneath 
his feet ? He who ere long invested the most common of all 
the wild-flowers of the earth with immortal beauty to all eyes, 
far beyond that of the rarest, till a tear as of pity might fall 
down manly cheeks on the dew-drop nature gathers on its 
"snawie bosom, sunward spread!" 

" Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower 5 
Thou's met me in an evil hoar ; 
For I maun crush amang the stoure 

Thy slender stem f 
To spare thee now is past my pow'r, 

Thou bonnie gem, 

' Alas ! it's no thy neebor sweet, 
The bonnie Lark, companion meet, 
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet ! 

Wi' speckled breast, 
When upward-springing, blythe to greet 
The purpling east." 

Thus far the life of this wonderful being is blameless — thus 
far it is a life of virtue. Let each season, with him and with 
all men, have its due meed of love and praise — and, therefore, 
let us all delight to declare how beautiful was the Spring ! And 
was there in all those bright and bold blossoms a fallacious 
promise ? Certainly not of the fruits of genius • for these far 
surpassed what the most hopeful could have predicted of the 
full-grown tree. But did the character of the man belie that of 
the boy 1 Was it manifested at last, either that the moral being 
had undergone some fatal change reaching to the core, or that 
it had been from the first hollow, and that these noble-seeming 
virtues had been delusions all ? 

The age of puberty has passed with its burning but blameless 
loves, and Robert Burns is now a man. Other seven years of 
the same kind of life as at Mount Oliphant, he enjoys and suffers 
at Lochlea. It is sad to think that his boyhood should have 
been so heavily burthened ; but we look with no such thoughts 
on his manhood, for his strength is knit, and the sinews of soul 



14 THE GENIUS AND 



and body are equal to their work. He still lives in his father's 
house, and he still upholds it ; he still reverences his father's 
eyes that are upon him ; and he is still a dutiful son — certainly 
not a prodigal. " During the whole of the time we lived at 
Lochlea with my father, he allowed my brother and me such 
wages for our labor as he gave to other laborers, as a part of 
which, every article of our clothing manufactured in the family 
was regularly accounted for. When my father's affairs were 
near a crisis, Robert and I took the farm of Mossgiel, consisting 
of 118 acres, at £90 per annum, as an asylum for the family 
in case of the worst. It was stocked by the property and indi- 
vidual savings, of the whole family, and was a joint concern 
among us. Every member of the family was allowed ordinary 
wages for the labor he performed on the farm. My brother's 
allowance and mine, was £7 per annum each, and during the 
whole time this family concern lasted, which was four years, as 
well as during the preceding period at Lochlea, his expenses 
never in one year exceeded his slender income. As I was in- 
trusted with the keeping of the family accounts, it is not possible 
that there can be any fallacy in this statement, in my brother's 
favor. His temperance and frugality were everything that could 
be wished" During his residence for six months in Irvine, in- 
deed, where he wrought at the business of a flax-dresser, with 
the view of adopting that trade, that he might get settled in life, 
paid a shilling a week for his lodging, and fed on meal and 
water, with some wild boon-companions he occasionally lived 
rather free. No doubt he sometimes tasted the " Scotch drink,'* 
of which he ere long sung the praises ; but even then, his inspi- 
ration was from "a well-head undefiled." He was as sober a 
man as his brother Gilbert himself, who says, " I do not recol- 
lect, during these seven years, to have ever seen him intoxi- 
cated, nor was he at all given to drinking." We have seen 
what were his virtues — for his vices, where must we look ? 

During all these seven years, the most dangerous in the life 
of every one, that of Robert Burns was singularly free from 
the sin to which nature is prone ; nor had he drunk of that 
guilty cup of the intoxication of the passions, that bewilders the 
virtue, and changes their wisdom into foolishness, of the discreet. 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 15 

est of the children of men. But drink of it at last he did; and 
like other sinners seemed sometimes even to glory in his shame 
But remorse puts on looks, and utters words, that being inter- 
preted, have far other meanings ; there may be recklessness 
without obduracy; and though the keenest anguish of self- 
reproach be no proof of penitence, it is a preparation for it in 
nature — a change of heart can be effected only by religion 
How wisely he addresses his friend ! 

" The sacred lowe o' weel placed love 9 

Luxuriously indulge it ; 
But never tempt th' illicit rove 

Though naething should divulge it 
I wave the quantum of the sin. 

The hazard o 5 concealing ; 
But oh ! it hardens «' within? 

And petrifies the feeling / " 

It was before any such petrifaction of feeling had to be de- 
plored by Robert Burns that he loved Mary Campbell, his 
" Highland Mary," with as pure a passion as ever possessed 
young poet's heart ; nor is there so sweet and sad a passage re- 
corded in the life of any other one of all the sons of song. 
Many such partings there have been between us poor beings — 
blind at all times, and often blindest in our bliss — but all gone to 
oblivion. But that hour can never die— that scene will live for 
ever. Immortal the two shadows standing there, holding to- 
gether the Bible — a little rivulet flowing between — in which, as 
in consecrated water, they have dipt their hands, water not 
purer than, at that moment, their united hearts. 

There are few of his songs more beautiful, and none more 
impassioned than 

" Ye banks, and braes, and streams around, 

The castle o' Montgomery, 
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, 

Your waters never drumlie ! 
There simmer first unfaulds her robes, 

And there the langest tarry ; 
For there I took the last fareweel 

0' my sweet Highland Mary." 



16 THE GENIUS AND 



But what are lines like these to his " Address to Mary in Hea- 
ven !" It was the anniversary of the day on which he heard 
of her death— that to him was the day on which she died. He 
did not keep it as a day of mourning — for he was happy in as 
good a wife as ever man had, and cheerfully went about the 
work of his farm. But towards the darkening " he appeared to 
grow very sad about something," and wandered out of doors 
into the barn-yard, where his Jean found him lying on some 
straw with his eyes fixed on a shining star "like another 
moon." 

" Thou lingering star, with less'ning ray, 

That lov'st to greet the early morn, 
Again thou usher'st in the day 

My Mary from my soul was torn. 
Mary ! dear departed shade ! 

Where is thy place of blissful rest ? 
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid ? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast !" 

He wrote them all down just as they now are, in their immortal 
beauty, and gave them to his wife. Jealousy may be felt even 
of the dead. But such sorrow as this the more endeared her 
husband to her heart- — a heart ever faithful — and at times when 
she needed to practise that hardest of all virtues in a wife — for- 
giving ; but here all he desired was her sympathy — and he 
found it in some natural tears. 

William Burnes was now — so writes Robert to one of his 
cousins—" in his own opinion, and indeed in almost everybody's 
else, in a dying condition," — far gone in a consumption, as it 
was called ; but dying, though not sixty, of old age at last. 
His lot in this life was in many things a hard one, but his bless- 
ings had been great, and his end was peace. All his children 
had been dutiful to their parents, and to their care he confided 
their mother. If he knew of Robert's transgressions in one 
year, he likewise knew of his obedience through many ; nor 
feared that he would strive to the utmost to shelter his mother in 
the storm. Robert writes, " On the 13th current (Feb., 1784) I 
lost the best of fathers. Though to be sure, we have had long 
warning of the impending stroke, still the feelings of nature 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 17 

claim their part ; and I cannot recollect the tender endearments 
and parental lessons of the best of friends, and the ablest of 
instructors, without feeling what perhaps the calmer dictates of 
reason would partly condemn. I hope my father's friends in 
your country will not let their connection in this place die with 
him. For my part I shall ever with pleasure, with pride, 
acknowledge my connection with those who were allied, by the 
ties of blood and friendship, to a man whose memory I will ever 
honor and revere. 5 ' And now the family remove to Mossgiel, 

" A virtuous household but exceeding poor." 

How fared Burns during the next two years, as a peasant ? 
How fared he as a poet ? As a peasant, poorly and hardly — as 
a poet, greatly and gloriously. How fared he as a man ? Read 
his confessions. Mossgiel was the coldest of all the soils on 
which the family had slaved and starved — starved is too strong 
a word — and, in spite of its ingratitude, its fields are hallowed 
ground. Thousands and tens of thousands have come afar to 
look on them; and Wordsworth's self has "gazed himself 
away " on the pathetic prospect. 

" ' There,' said a stripling, pointing with much pride, 
Towards a low roof, with green trees half-concealed, 
« Is Mossgiel farm ; and that's the very field 
Where Burns plough'd up the Daisy.' Far and wide 
A plain below stretched seaward, while, descried 
Above sea-clouds, the peaks of Arran rose ; 
And, by that simple notice, the repose 
Of earth, sky, sea, and air, was vivified. 
Beneath the random bield of clod or stone, 
Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower 
Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour 
Have passed away ; less happy than the one 
That, by the unwilling ploughshare, died to prove 
The tender charm of poetry and love." 

Peasant — Poet — Man — is, indeed, an idle distinction. Burns 
is sitting alone in the Auld Clay-Biggin, for it has its one re- 
tired room ; and as he says, " half-mad, half- fed, half-sarkit " — 
all he had made by rhyme ! He is the picture of a desponding 
3 



18 THE GENIUS AND 



man, steeped to the lips in poverty of his own bringing on, and 
with a spirit vainly divided between hard realities, and high 
hopes beyond his reach, resolving at last to forswear all delu- 
sive dreams, and submit to an ignoble lot. When at once, out 
of the gloom arises a glory, effused into form by his own genius 
creative according to his soul's desire, and conscious of its great- 
ness, despite of despair. A thousand times before now had he 
been so disquieted and found no comfort. But the hour had 
come of self- revelation, and he knew that on earth his name 
was to live for ever. 

" All hail ! my own inspired bard ! 
In me thy native muse regard ! 
Nor longer mourn thy fate is hard, 

Thus poorly low ! 
I come to give thee such reward 

As we bestow. 

" Know, the great genius of this land 
Has many a light, aerial band, 
Who, all beneath his high command, 

Harmoniously, 
As arts or arms they understand, 

Their labors ply. 



" Of these am I — Coila my name ; 
And this district as mine I claim, 
Where once the Campbells, chief of fame, 

Held ruling power : 
I mark'd thy embryo tuneful flame, 

Thy natal hour. 

" With future hope, I oft would gaze 
Fond, on thy little early ways, 
Thy rudely caroll'd chiming phrase, 

In uncouth rhymes, 
Fir'd at the simple, artless lays 

Of other times. 

" I saw thee seek the sounding shore, 
Delighted with the dashing roar ; 
Or when the north his fleecy store 

Drove through the sky, 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 19 



I saw grim nature's visage hoar 

Struck thy young eye. 

" Or, when the deep green-mantl'd earth 
Warm cherish' d every flow'retV birth, 
And joy and music pouring forth 

In ev'ry grove, 
I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth 

With boundless love. 

" When ripen'd fields, and azure skies, 
CalPd forth the reaper's rustling noise, 
I saw thee leave their evening joys, 

And lonely stalk, 
To vent thy bosom's swelling rise 

In pensive walk. 

s< When youthful love, warm-blushing strong, 
Keen-shivering shot thy nerves along, 
Those accents, grateful to thy tongue 

Th' adored Name, 
I taught thee how to pour in song, 

To soothe thy flame. 

« I saw thy pulse's maddening play, 
Wild send thee pleasure's devious way, 
Misled by fancy's meteor ray, 

By passion driven ; 
But yet the light that led astray 

Was light from heaven. 



*« To give my counsels all in one 
Thy tuneful flame still careful fan ; 
Preserve the dignity of man, 

With soul erect : 
And trust the Universal Plan 

Will all protect. 

" And wear thou this — she solemn said, 
And bound the Holly round my head : 
The polish'd leaves, and berries red, 

Did rustling play ; 
And, like a passing thought, she fled 

In light away." 



20 THE GENIUS AND 



" To reconcile to our imagination the entrance of an aerial 
being into a mansion of this kind," says the excellent Currie, 
" required the powers of Burns ; he, however, succeeds." Burns 
cared not at that time for our imagination — not he, indeed — not 
a straw • nor did he so much as know of our existence. He 
knew that there was a human race ; and he believed that he was 
born to be a great power among them, especially all over his 
beloved and beloving Scotland. " All hail ! my own inspired 
bard !" That " all hail F' he dared to hear from supernatural 
lips, but not till his spirit had long been gazing, and long been 
listening to one commissioned by the " genius of the land," to 
stand a Vision before her chosen poet in his hut. Reconcile her 
entrance to our imagination ! Into no other mansion but that 
" Auld Clay Biggin," would Coila have descended from the sky. 

The critic continues, " To the painting on her mantle, on 
which is depicted the most striking scenery, as well as the most 
distinguished characters of his native country, some exception 
may be made. The mantle of Coila, like the cup of Thyrsis 
(see the first Idyllium of Theocritus), and the shield of Achilles, 
is too much crowded with figures, and some of the objects re- 
presented upon it are scarcely admissible according to the prin- 
ciples of design." 

We advise you not to see the first Idyllium of Theocritus. 
Perhaps you have no Greek. Mr. Chapman's translation is as 
good as a translation can well be, but then you may not have a 
copy of it at hand. A pretty wooden cup it is, with curled ears 
and ivy-twined lips — embossed thereon the figure of a woman 
with flowing robes and a Lydian head-dress, to whom two angry 
men are making love. Hard by, a stout old fisherman on a rock 
is in the act of throwing his net into the sea : not far from him 
is a vineyard, where a boy is sitting below a hedge framing a 
locust trap with stalks of asphodel, and guarding the grapes 
from a couple of sly foxes. Thyrsis, we are told by Theocritus, 
bought it from a Calydonian Skipper for a big cheese-cake and 
a goat. We must not meddle with the shield of Achilles. 

Turn we then to the " Vision " of Burns, our Scottish Theo- 
critus, as we have heard him classically called, and judge of 
Dr. Currie's sense in telling us to see the cup of Thyrsis. 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 21 

ee Down flow'd her robe, a tartan sheen ; 
Till half her leg was scrimply seen ; 
And such a leg ! my bonnie Jean 

Could only peer it ; 
Sae straught, sae taper, tight, and clean, 

Nane else could near it." 

You observe Burns knew not yet who stood before him — woman, 
or angel, or fairy — but the Vision reminded him of her whom 
best he loved. 

" Green, slender, leaf-clad holly-boughs 
Were twisted gracefu 5 round her brows ; 
I took her for some Scottish Muse, 

By that same token." 

Some Scottish Muse — but which of them he had not leisure to 
conjecture, so lost was he in admiration of that mystic robe — 
"that mantle large, of greenish hue." As he continued to gaze 
on her, his imagination beheld whatever it chose to behold. The 
region dearest to the Poet's heart is all emblazoned there — and 
tfrex*e too its sages and its heroes. 

" Here, rivers in the sea were lost; 

There, mountains to the skies were tost : 
Here, tumbling billows mark'd the coast, 

With surging foam : 
There, distant shone Art's lofty boast, 

The lordly dome. 

" Here, Doon pour'd down his far-fetch'd floods ; 
There, well-fed Irvine stately thuds : 
Auld hermit Ayr staw thro' his woods, 

On to the shore ; 
And many a lesser torrent scuds, 

With seeming roar. 

" Low, in a sandy valley spread, 
An ancient borough rear'd her head ; 
Still, as in Scottish story read, 

She boasts a race, 
To ev'ry nobler virtue bred, 

And polish'd grace 



22 THE GENIUS AND 



" By stately tow'r or palace fair, 
Or ruins pendent in the air, 
Bold stems of heroes, here and there, 

I could discern ; 
Some seemed to muse, some seem'd to dare, 

With feature stern. 

" My heart did glowing transport feel, 
To see a race heroic wheel, 
And brandish round the deep -dyed steel , f 

In sturdy blows ; 
While back recoiling seem'd to reel 
Their suthorn foes. 

" His Country's Saviour, mark him well ! 
Bold Richardton's heroic swell : 
The chief on Sark who glorious fell. 

In high command ; 
And he whom ruthless fates expel 
His native land. 

" There, where a scepter'd Pictish shade, 
Stalk'd round his ashes lowly laid, 
I mark'd a martial race, portray'd 

In colors strong ; 
Bold, soldier-featur'd, undismayed 

They strode along." 

What have become of "the laws of design?' 5 But would 
good Dr. Currie have dried up the sea ! How many yards, will 
anybody tell us, were in that green mantle ? And what a pat- 
tern ! Thomas Campbell knew better what liberty is allowed 
by nature to Imagination in her inspired dreams. In his noble 
Stanzas to the memory of Burns, he says, in allusion to " The 
Vision," 

" Him, in his clay -built cot the Muse 
Entranced, and showed him all the forms 

Of fairy light and wizard gloom, 
That only gifted poet views,— 

The genii of the floods and storms, 
And martial shades from glory's tomb." 

The Fata Morgana are obedient to the laws of perspective, 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 23 

and of optics in general ; but they belong to the material ele- 
ments of nature ; this is a spiritual creation, and Burns is its 
maker. It is far from perfect, either in design or execution ; 
but perfection is found nowhere here below, except in Shak- 
speare ; and, if the Vision offend you, we fear your happiness 
will not be all you could desire it even in the Tempest or the 
Midsummer's Night's Dream. 

How full of fine poetry are one and all of his Epistles to his 
friends Sillar, Lapraik, Simpson, Smith, — worthy men one and 
all, and among them much mother- wit almost as good as genius, 
and thought to be genius by Burns, who in the generous enthu- 
siasm of his nature exaggerated the mental gifts of everybody 
he loved, and conceived their characters to be " accordant to 
his soul's desire." His " Epistle to Davie " was among the 
very earliest of his productions, and Gilbert's favorable opinion 
of it suggested to him the first idea of becoming an author. 
" It was, I think, in summer 1784, when in the interval of hard 
labor, he and I were reading in the garden (kail-yard), that he 
repeated to me the principal parts of this Epistle." It breathes 
a noble spirit of independence, and of proud contentment dally- 
ing with the hardships of its lot, and in the power of manhood 
regarding the riches that are out of its reach, without a particle 
of envy, and with a haughty scorn. True he says, " I hanker 
and canker to see their cursed pride;" but he immediately 
bursts out into a strain that gives the lie to his own words : 

" What tho', like commoners of air, 
We wander out, we know not where, 

But either house or hall ? 
Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods, 
The sweeping vales, and foaming floods, 

Are free alike to all. 
In days when daisies deck the ground, 

And blackbirds whistle clear, 
With honest joy our hearts will bound, 
To see the coming year : 
On braes when we please, then, 

We'll sit an' sowth a tune ; 
Syne rhyme till't, wee'l time till't, , 
And sing't when we hae done. 



24 THE GENIUS AND 



" It's no in titles nor in rank ; 
It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 

To purchase peace and rest ; 
It's no in makin' muckle mair ; 
It's no in books, it's no in lear, 

To make us truly blest ; 
If happiness hae not her seat 

And centre in the breast, 
We may be wise, or rich, or great, 
But never can be blest ; 

Nae treasures, nor pleasures, 

Could make us happy lang ; 
The heart ay's the part ay, 

That makes us right or wrang." 

Through all these Epistles we hear him exulting in the con- 
sciousness of his own genius, and pouring out his anticipations in 
verses so full of force and fire, that of themselves they privilege 
him to declare himself a Poet after Scotland's own heart. Not 
even in " The Vision " does he kindle into brighter transports, 
when foreseeing his fame, and describing the fields of its glory, 
than in his Epistle to the schoolmaster of Ochiltree ; for all his 
life he associated with schoolmasters — finding along with know- 
ledge, talent, and integrity, originality and strength of character 
prevalent in that meritorious and ill-rewarded class of men. 
What can be finer than this ? 

" We'll sing auld Coila's plains an' fells, 
Her moors red-brown wi' heather bells, 
Her banks an' braes, her dens and dells, 

Where glorious Wallace 
Aft bare the gree, as story tells, 

Frae southern billies. 

" At Wallace' name what Scottish blood 
But boils up in a spring-tide flood ! 
Oft have our fearless fathers strode 

By Wallace' side, 
Still pressing onward, red-wat-shod, 
Or glorious dy'd. 

M O, sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods, 
When lintwhitss chaunt amang the buds, 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 25 

And jinkin hares, in amorous whids, 

Their loves enjoy, 
While thro 5 the braes the cushat croods 

With wailful cry ! 

" Ev'n winter bleak has charms for me 
When wind 3 ^ave thro' the naked tree ; 
Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree 

Are hoary grey ; 
Or blindin: drifts wild-furious flee, 

Dark'ning the day. 

" Nature ! a' thy shows an' forms 
To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms I 
Whether the simmer kindly warms 

Wi' life an' light, 
Or winter howls, in gusty storms, 

The lang, dark night ! 

" The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, 
Till by himseP he learn'd to wander, 
Adown some trotting burn's meander, 

An' no think lang ; 
Or sweet to stray, an' pensive ponder 

A heart-felt sang !" 

It has been thoughtlessly said that Burns had no very deep 
love of nature, and that he has shown no very great power as a 
descriptive poet. The few lines quoted suffice to set aside that 
assertion ; but it is true that his love of nature was always 
linked with some vehement passion or some sweet affection for 
living creatures, and that it was for the sake of the humanity 
she cherishes in her bosom, that she was dear to him as his own 
life-blood. His love of nature by being thus restricted was the 
more intense. Yet there are not wanting passages that show 
how exquisite was his perception of her beauties even when un- 
associated with any definite emotion, and inspiring only that 
pleasure which we imbibe through the senses into our unthink- 
ing souls. 

" Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, 
As through the glen it wimpl't ; 
Whyles round a rocky scar it strays ; 
Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't ; 



26 THE GENIUS AND 



Whyles glittered to the nightly rays, 

Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle ; 
Whyles cookit underneath the braes, 

Below the spreading hazel, 

Unseen that night." 

Such pretty passages of pure description are rare, and the 
charm of this one depends on its sudden sweet intrusion into the 
very midst of a scene of noisy merriment. But there are 
many passages in which the descriptive power is put forth under 
the influence of emotion so gentle that they come within that 
kind of composition in which it has been thought Burns does not 
excel. As for example, 

" Nae mair the Mower on field or meadow springs ; 
Nae mair the grove with airy concert rings, 
Except perhaps the Robin's whistling glee, 
Proud o' the height o' some bit half-lang tree ; 
The hoary morns precede the sunny days, 
Mild, calm, serene, wide spreads the noon-tide blaze. 
While thick the gossamour waves wanton in the rays." 

§»eldom setting himself to describe visual objects, but when he 
is under strong emotion, he seems to have taken considerable 
pains when he did, to produce something striking ; and though 
he never fails on such occasions to do so, yet he is sometimes 
ambitious overmuch, and, though never feeble, becomes bom- 
bastic, as in his lines on the Fall of Fyers : 

" And viewless echo's ear astonished rends." 

In the a Brigs of Ayr" there is one beautiful, and one magnifi- 
cent passage of this kind. 

" All before their sight, 
A fairy train appear'd in order bright : 
Adown the glittering stream they featly danc'd ; 
Bright to the moon their various dresses glanc'd: 
They footed o'er the wat'ry glass so neat, 
The infant ice scarce bent beneath their feet : 
While arts of Minstrelsy among them rung, 
And soul-ennobling Bards heroic ditties sung." 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 27 

He then breaks oft in celebration of " M'Lauchlan, thairm-in- 
spiring sage," that is, "a well-known performer of Scottish 
music on the violin/' and returns, at his leisure, to the fairies ! 

The other passage which we have called magnificent is a de- 
scription of a spate. But in it, it is true, he personates the Auld 
Brig, and is inspired by wrath and contempt of the New. 

" Conceited gowk ! puff 'd up wi' windy pride ! 
This monie a year I've stood the flood an' tide ; 
And tho' wi' crazy eild I'm sair forfairn, 
I'll be a Brig, when ye're as hapeless cairn ! 
As yet ye little ken about the matter, 
But twa-three winters will inform you better, 
When heavy, dark, continued, a' -day rains, 
Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains ; 
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, 
Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil, 
Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, 
Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source, 
Arous'd by blust'ring winds an' spotting thowes, 
In mony a torrent down his sna-broo rowes ; 
While crashing ice, borne on the roaring speat, 
Sweeps dams, an' mills, an' brigs, a' to the gate ; 
And from Glenbuck, down to the Ratton-key, 
Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd, tumbling sea ; 
Then down ye'll hurl, deil nor ye never rise ! 
And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies." 

Perhaps we have dwelt too long on this point ; but the truth 
is that Burns would have utterly despised most of what is now 
dignified with the name of poetry, where harmlessly enough 

" Pure description takes the place of sense ; " 

but far worse, where the agonizing artist intensifies himself into 
genuine convulsions at the shrine of nature, or acts the epileptic 
to extort alms. The world is beginning to lose patience with 
such idolaters, and insists on being allowed to see the sun set 
with her own eyes, and with her own ears to hear the sea. Why, 
there is often more poetry in five lines of Burns than any fifty 
volumes of the versifiers who have had the audacity to criticise 
him — as by way of specimen — 



28 THE GENIUS AND 



: " When biting Boreas, fell and doure, 
Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r ; 
When Phcebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r 

Far south the lift, 
Dim-dark'ning thro' the flaky show'r 

Or whirling drift : 

" Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd, 
Poor labor sweet in sleep was lock'd, 
While burns, wi' snawy wreeths up-chock'd, 

Wild-eddying swirl, 
Or thro' the mining outlet bock'd, 

Down headlong hurl." 

" Halloween " is now almost an obsolete word — and the live- 
liest of all festivals, that used to usher in the winter with one 
long night of mirthful mockery of superstitious fancies, not unat- 
tended with stirrings of imaginative fears in many a simple 
breast, is gone with many other customs of the good old time, 
not among town-folks only, but dwellers in rural parishes far 
withdrawn from the hum of crowds, where all such rites origi- 
nate and latest fall into desuetude. The present wise generation 
of youngsters can care little or nothing about a poem which 
used to drive their grandfathers and grandmothers half-mad with 
merriment when boys and girls, gathered in a circle round some 
choice reciter, who, though perhaps endowed with no great 
memory for grammar, had half of Burns by heart. Many of 
them, doubtless, are of opinion that it is a silly affair. So must 
think the more aged march-of-mind men who have outgrown the 
whims and follies of their ill-educated youth, and become in- 
structors in all manner of wisdom. In practice extinct to elderly 
people it survives in poetry ; and there the body of the harmless 
superstition, in its very form and pressure, is embalmed. " Hal- 
loween " was thought, surely you all know that, to be a night 
"when witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings, 
are all abroad on their baneful midnight errands ; particularly 
those aerial people, the fairies, are said on that night to hold a 
grand anniversary." So writes Burns in a note; but in the 
poem evil spirits are disarmed of all their terrors, and fear is 
fun. It might have begun well enough, and nobody would have 
found fault, with 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 29 

" Some merry, friendly, kintra folks, 
Together did convene, 
To burn their nits, an' pou their stocks, 
An' haud their Halloween 

Fu' bly the this night;" 

but Burns, by a few beautiful introductory lines, brings the 
•festival at once within the world of poetry. 

u Upon that night, when fairies light, 
On Cassilis Downans dance, 
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze, 

On sprightly coursers prance ; 
Or for Colean the route is ta'en. 

Beneath the moon's pale beams ; 
There, up the cove, to stray an' rove 
Amang the rocks and streams 

To sport that night. 

" Amang the bonnie winding banks, 
Where Doon rins, wimpling clear, 
Where Bruce ance rul'd the martial ranks 
And shook his Carrick spear." 

Then instantly he collects the company — the business of tne 
evening is set a-going — each stanza has its now actor and its 
new charm — the transitions are as quick as it is in the power of 
winged words to fly ; female characters of all ages and disposi- 
tions, from the auld guid-wife " wha fuft her pipe wi' sic a lunt," 
to wee Jenny " wi' her little skelpie limmer's face " — Jean, Nell, 
Merran, Meg, maidens all — and " wanton widow Leezie "— - 
figure each in her own individuality animated into full life, by 
a few touches. Nor less various the males, from hav'rel Will 
to " auld uncle John wha wedlock's joys sin' Mar's year did 
desire " — Rab and Jock, and " fechtin Jamie Fleck " like all 
bullies " cooard afore bogles ; " the only pause in their fast- 
following proceedings being caused by garrulous grannie's pious 
reproof of Jenny for daurin to try sic sportin " as eat the apple 
at the glass " — a reproof proving that her own wrinkled breast 
holds many queer memories of lang-syne Halloweens ; — all the 
carking cares of the work-day world are clean forgotten ; the 
hopes, fears and wishes that most agitate every human breast, 



30 THE GENIUS AND 



and are by the simplest concealed, here exhibit themselves with- 
out disguise in the freedom not only permitted but inspired by 
the passion that rules the night — "the passion," says the poet 
himself, " of prying into futurity, which makes a striking part 
of the history of human nature in its rude state, in all ages and 
nations ; and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic 
mind, if any such should honor the author with a perusal, to ses 
the remains of it, among the more unenlightened of our own." 

But how have we been able to refrain from saying a few 
words about the Cottar's Saturday Night ? How affecting Gil- 
bert's account of its origin ! 

" Robert had frequently remarked to me that he thought there 
was something peculiarly venerable in the phrase, ' Let us wor- 
ship God/ used by a decent sober head of a family introducing 
family worship. To this sentiment of the author the world is 
indebted for the Cottar's Saturday Night. The hint of the 
plan, and title of the poem, were taken from Ferguson's Farm- 
er's Ingle. When Robert had not some pleasure in view in 
which I was not thought fit to participate, we used frequently 
to walk together, when the weather was favorable, on the Sunday 
afternoons (those precious breathing-times to the laboring part 
of the community) and enjoyed such Sundays as would make 
me regret to see their number abridged. It was on one of those 
walks that I first had the pleasure of hearing the author repeat 
the Cottar's Saturday Night. I do not recollect to have read or 
heard anything by which I was more highly electrified." No 
wonder Gilbert was highly electrified ; for though he had read 
or heard many things of his brother Robert's of equal poetical 
power, not one among them all was so charged with those 
sacred influences that connect the human heart with heaven. It 
must have sounded like a very revelation of all the holi- 
ness for ever abiding in that familiar observance, but which 
custom, without impairing its efficacy, must often partially hide 
from the children of labor when it is all the time helping to sus- 
tain them upon and above this earth. And this from the erring 
to the steadfast brother ! From the troubled to the quiet spirit ! 
out of a heart too often steeped in the waters of bitterness, is- 
suing, as from an unpolluted fountain, the inspiration of pious 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 31 



song ! But its effects on innumerable hearts is not now electrical- 
it inspires peace. It is felt yet, and sadly changed will then be 
Scotland, if ever it be not felt, by every one who peruses it, ta 
be a communication from brother to brother. It is felt by us 5 
all through from beginning to end, to be Burns's Cottar's Satur- 
day Night ; at each succeeding sweet or solemn stanza we more 
and more love the man — at its close we bless him as a benefac- 
tor ; and if, as the picture fades, thoughts of sin and of sorrow 
will arise, and will not be put down, let them, as we hope for 
mercy, be of our own — not his ; let us tremble for ourselves as 
we hear a voice saying, " Fear God and keep his command- 
ments." 

There are few more perfect poems. It is the utterance of a 
heart whose chords were all tuned to gratitude, " making sweet 
melody" to the Giver, on a night not less sacred in His eye than 
His own appointed Sabbath. 

" November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh ; 

The short'ning winter day is near a close ; 
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh ; 

The black' ning trains o' craws to their repose ; 
The toil worn Cottar frae his labor goes, 

This night his weekly moil is at an end, 
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, 
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend." 

•That one single stanza is in itself a picture, one may say a 
poem, of the poor man's life. It is so imagined on the eye that 
we absolutely see it ; but then not an epithet but shows the con- 
dition on which he holds, and the heart with which he endures, 
and enjoys it. Work he must in the face of November ; but 
God who made the year shortens and lengthens its days for the 
sake of his living creatures, and has appointed for them all 
their hour of rest. The "miry beasts" will soon be at supper 
in their clean-strawed stalls — •" the black'ning train o' craws" 
invisibly hushed on their rocking trees ; and he whom God made 
after his own image, that " toil-worn Cottar," he too may lie 
down and sleep. There is nothing especial in his lot wherefore 
he should be pitied, nor are we asked to pity him, as he " col 



32 THE GENIUS AND 



lects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes :" many of us, who 
have work to do and do it not, may envy his contentment, and 
the religion that gladdens his release — " hoping the morn in 
ease and rest to spend," only to such as he, in truth, a Sabbath. 
" Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day. Six days 
shalt thou labor and do all that thou hast to do. But the 
seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou 
shalt do no manner of work !" O ! that man should ever find it 
in his heart to see in that law a stern obligation — not a merciful 
boon and a blessed privilege ! 

In those times family worship in such dwellings, all over 
Scotland, was not confined to one week-day. It is to be believed 
that William Burnes might have been heard by his son Robert 
duly every night saying, " Let us worship God." " There was 
something peculiarly venerable in the phrase M every time he 
heard it ; but on " Saturday night " family worship was sur- 
rounded, in its solemnity, with a gathering of whatever is most 
cheerful and unalloyed in the lot of labor ; and the poet's genius 
in a happy hour hearing those words in his heart, collected 
many nights into one, and made the whole observance, as it 
were, a religious establishment, it is to be hoped, for ever. 

" The fifth and sixth stanzas, and the eighteenth," says Gil- 
bert, "thrilled with peculiar ecstasy through my soul ;" and 
well they might ; for, in homeliest words, they tell at once of 
home's familiar doings and of the highest thoughts that can 
ascend in supplication to the throne of God. What is the' 
eighteenth stanza, and why did it too " thrill with peculiar ecs- 
tasy my soul ?" You may be sure that whatever thrilled 
Gilbert's soul will thrill yours if it be in holy keeping • for he 
was a good man, and walked all his days fearing God. 

" Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way ; 
The youngling cottagers retire to rest ; 
The parent-pair their secret homage pay, 

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request 
That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest, 

And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride, 
Would, in the way his wisdom sees the Best, 
For them and for their little ones provide : 
But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside." 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 33 

Think again of the first stanza of all — for you have forgotten it 
— of the toil-worn Cottar collecting his spades, his mattocks, and 
his hoes, and weary o'er the moor bending his course home- 
wards. In spite of his hope of the morn, you could hardly help 
looking on him then as if he were disconsolate — now you are 
prepared to believe, with the poet, that such brethren are among 
the best of their country's sons, that 

" From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad ;" 

and you desire to join in the Invocation that bursts from his 
pious and patriotic heart : 

" Scotia ! my dear, my native soil ! 

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent ! 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil, 

Be bless' d with health, and peace, and sweet content ! 
And ! may Heaven their simple lives prevent 

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! 
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, 
A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
And stand a wall of fire around their much lov'd Isle. 

" Thou ! who pour'd the patriotic tide 

That stream'd through Wallace's undaunted heart ; 
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride, 
Or nobly die, the second glorious part, 
(The patriot's God, peculiarly thou art, 

His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward !) 
never, never, Scotia's realm desert : 
But still the patriot, and the patriot bard, 
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard !" 

We said there are few more perfect poems. The expression 
is hardly a correct one ; but in two of the stanzas there are 
lines which we never read without wishing them away, and 
there is one stanza we could sometimes almost wish away alto- 
gether ; the sentiment, though beautifully worded, being some- 
what harsh, and such as must be felt to be unjust by many de- 
vout and pious people : 



34 THE GENIUS AND 



" They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; 
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim : 
Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise, 

Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name ; 
Or noble Elgin beats the heaven-ward flame, 

The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays : 
Compared with these Italian trills are tame ; 
The tickVd ears no heart-felt raptures raise ; 
JSTae unison hae they with our Creator's praise." 

We do not find fault with Burns for having written these lines : 
for association of feeling with feeling, by contrast, is perhaps most 
of all powerful in music. Believing that there was no devotional 
spirit in Italian music, it was natural for him to denounce its 
employment in religious services ; but we all know that it can- 
not without most ignorant violation of truth be said of the hymns 
of that most musical of all people, and superstitious as they may 
be, among the most devout, that 

" Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise." 

Our objection to some lines in another stanza is more serious, 
for it applies not to a feeling but a judgment. That there is 
more virtue in a cottage than in a palace we are not disposed to 
deny at any time, least of all when reading the Cottar's Saturday 
Night : and we entirely go along with Burns when he says, 

" And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road, 
The cottage leaves the palace far behind ;" 

but there, we think, he ought to have stopped, or illustrated the 
truth in a milder manner than 

" What is a lordling's pomp ? a cumbrous load, 
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, 
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined." 

Our moral nature revolts with a sense of injustice from the com- 
parison of the wickedness of one class with the goodness of an- 
other ; and the effect is the very opposite of that intended, the 
rising up of a miserable conviction that for a while had been 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 35 

laid asleep, that vice and crime are not excluded from cots, but 
often, alas ! are found there in their darkest colors and most 
portentous forms. 

The whole stanza we had in our mind as somehow or other 
not entirely delightful, is 

" Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride, 
In all the pomp of method, and of art, 
When men display to congregations wide, 
Devotion's every grace except the heart. 
The Pow'r, incens'd, the pageant will desert, 

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ; 
But haply, in some cottage far apart, 

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul ; 
And in his book of life the inmates poor enrol." 

" Let us join in the worship of God " is a strong desire of na- 
ture, and a commanded duty ; and thus are brought together, 
for praise and prayer, " congregations wide," in all populous 
places of every Christian land. Superstition is sustained by the 
same sympathy as religion — enlightenment of reason being es- 
sential to faith. There sit, every Sabbath, hundreds of hypo- 
crites, thousands of the sincere, tens of thousands of the indiffer- 
ent — how many of the devout or how few who shall say that un- 
derstands the meaning of devotion ? If all be false and hollow, a 
mere semblance only, then indeed 

• " The Pow'r incens'd, the pageant will desert, 
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ; " 

but if, even in the midst of "religion's pride/ 5 there be humble 
and contrite hearts — if a place be found for the poor in spirit 
even " in gay religions full of pomp and gold " — a Christian 
poet ought to guard his heart against scorn of the ritual of any 
form of Christian worship. Be it performed in Cathedral, Kirk, 
or Cottage — God regards it only when performed in spirit and in 
truth. 

Remember all this poetry, and a hundred almost as fine things 
besides, was composed within little more than two years, by a 
man all the while working for wages — seven pounds from May- 
day to May-day ; and that he never idled at his work, but mowed 



36 THE GENIUS AND 



and ploughed as if working by the piece, and could afford there- 
fore, God bless his heart, to stay the share for a minute, but too 
late for the " wee, sleekit, cowrin, timorous beastie's "■ nest. 
Folks have said he was a bad farmer, and neglected Mossgiel, 
an idler in the land. 

" How various his employments whom the world 
Calls idle ! " 

Absent in the body, we doubt not, he frequently was from his 
fields ; oftenest in the evenings and at night. Was he in Nance 
Tinnock's 1 She knew him by name and head-mark, for once 
seen he was not to be forgotten ; but she complained that he had 
never drunk three half-mutchkins in her house, whatever he 
might say in his lying poems. In Poussie Nannie's — mother of 
Racer Jess ? — He was there once ; and out of the scum and 
refuse of the outcasts of the lowest grade of possible being, he 
constructed a Beggar's Opera, in which the singers and dancers, 
drabs and drunkards all, belong still to humanity ; and though 
huddling together in the filth of the flesh, must not be classed, 
in their enjoyments, with the beasts that perish. In the Smiddy ? 
Ay, you might have found him there, at times when he had no 
horse to be sboed, no coulter to be sharpened. 

" When Vulcan gies his bellows breath, 
An' ploughmen gather wi' their graith, 
rare ! to see thee fizz an 5 freath 

I' th' luggit caup ! 
Then Burnewin comes on like death 

At every chaup. 

" Nae mercy, then, for airn or steel ; 
The brawnie, bainie, ploughman cheel, 
Brings hand owrehip, wi' sturdy wheel, 
The strong forehammer, 
Till block an' studdie ring an' reel 

Wi' dinsome clamor." 

On frozen Muir-loch 1 Among the curlers "a*, their roaring 
play " — roaring is the right word — but 'tis not the bonspiel only 
that roars, it is the ice, and echo tells it is from her crags that 
submit not to the snow. There king of his rink was Rabbie 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 37 



Burns to be found ; and at night in the Hostelry, in the reek of 
beef and greens and c; Scotch drink," Apollo in the shape of a 
ploughman at the head of the fir-table that dances with all its 
glasses to the horny fists clenching with cordial thumpers the 
sallies of wit and humor volleying from his lips and eyes, unre- 
proved by the hale old minister who is happy to meet his parish- 
ioners out of the pulpit, and by his presence keeps the poet 
within bounds, if not of absolute decorum, of that decency be- 
coming men in their most jovial mirth, and not to be violated 
without reproach by genius in its most wanton mood dallying 
even with forbidden things. Or at a Rockin' ? An evening 
meeting, as you know, " one of the objects of which," so says 
the glossary, " is spinning with the rock or distaff; " but which 
has many other objects, as the dullest may conjecture, when 
lads and lasses have come flocking from " behind the hills where 
Stinchar flows, mang muirs and mosses many o'," to one soli- 
tary homestead made roomy enough for them all ; and if now 
and then felt to be too close and crowded for the elderly people 
and the old, not unprovided with secret spots near at hand in the 
broom and the brackens, where the sleeping lintwhites sit undis- 
turbed by lovers' whispers, and lovers may look, if they choose 
it, unashamed to the stars. 

And what was he going to do with all this poetry — poetry 
accumulating fast as his hand, released at night from other im- 
plements, could put it on paper, in bold, round, upright charac- 
ters, that tell of fingers more familiar with the plough than the 
pen ? He himself sometimes must have wondered to find every 
receptacle in the spence crammed with manuscripts, to say 
nothing of the many others floating about all over the country, 
and setting the smiddies in a roar, and not a few, of which 
nothing was said, folded in the breast-kerchiefs of maidens, put 
therein by his own hand on the lea-rig, beneath the milk-white 
thorn. What brought him out into the face of day as a Poet ? 

Of all the women Burns ever loved, Mary Campbell not ex- 
cepted, the dearest to him by far, from first to last, was Jean 
Armour. During composition her image rises up from his heart 
before his eyes the instant he touches on any thought or feeling 
with which she could be in any way connected \ and sometimes 



38 THE GENIUS AND 



his allusions to her might even seem out of place, did they not 
please us, by letting us know that he could not altogether forget 
her, whatever the subject his muse had chosen. Others may 
have inspired more poetical strains, but there is an earnestness 
in his fervors, at her name, that brings her breathing in warm 
flesh and blood to his breast. Highland Mary he would have 
made his wife, and perhaps broken her heart. He loved her 
living, as a creature in a dream, dead as a spirit in heaven. 
But Jean Armour possessed his heart in the stormiest season 
of his passions, and sbe possessed it in the lull that preceded 
their- dissolution. She was well worthy of his affection, on ac- 
count of her excellent qualities ; and though never beautiful, 
had many personal attractions. But Burns felt himself bound 
to her by that inscrutable mystery in the soul of every man, by 
which one other being, and one only, is believed, and truly, 
to be essential to his happiness here, — without whom, life is not 
life. Her strict and stern father, enraged out of all religion, 
both natural and revealed, with his daughter for having sinned 
with a man of sin, tore from her hands her marriage lines as 
she besought forgiveness on her knees, and without pity for the 
life stirring within her, terrified her into the surrender and re- 
nunciation of the title of wife, branding her thereby with an ab- 
horred name. A father's power is sometimes very terrible, and 
it was so here ; for she submitted, with less outward show of agony 
than can be well understood, and Burns almost became a mad- 
man. His worldly circumstances were wholly desperate, for 
bad seasons had stricken dead the cold soil of Mossgiel ; but he 
was willing to work for his wife in ditches, or to support her for 
a while at home, by his wages as a negro-driver in the West 
Indies. 

A more unintelligible passage than this never occurred in the 
life of any other man, certainly never a more trying one ; and 
Burns must at this time have been tormented by as many violent 
passions, in instant succession or altogether, as the human heart 
could hold. In verse he had for years given vent to all his 
moods ; and his brother tells us that the Lament was composed 
" after the first distraction of his feelings had a little subsided." 
Had he lost her by death he would have been dumb, but his 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 39 

grief was not mortal, and it grew eloquent, when relieved and 
sustained from prostration by other passions that lift up the head, 
if it be only to let it sink down again, rage, pride, indignation, 
jealousy, and scorn. " Never man loved, or rather adored wo- 
man more than I did her ; and to confess a truth between you 
and me, I do still love her to distraction after all. My poor 
dear unfortunate Jean ! It is not the losing her that makes me 
so unhappy ; but for her sake I feel most severely ; I grieve she 
is in the road to, I fear, eternal ruin. May Almighty God for- 
give her ingratitude and perjury to me, as I from my very soul 
forgive her ; and may his grace be with her, and bless her in 
all her future life ! I can have no nearer idea of the place of 
eternal punishment than what I have felt in my own breast on 
her account. I have tried often to forget her ; I have run into 
all kinds of dissipation and riot, mason-meetings, drinking 
matches, and other mischiefs, to drive her out of my head, but 
all in vain. And now for the grand cure : the ship is on her 
way home, that is to take me out to Jamaica ; and then fare- 
well, dear old Scotland ! and farewell, dear ungrateful Jean ! 
for never, never will I see you more." In the Lament, there 
are the same passions, but genius has ennobled them by the ten- 
derness and elevation of the finest poetry, guided their transi- 
tions by her solemnizing power, inspired their appeals to con- 
scious night and nature, and subdued down to the beautiful 
and pathetic, the expression of what had else been agony and 
despair. 

Twenty pounds would enable him to leave Scotland, and take 
him to Jamaica ; and to raise them, it occurred to Robert Burns 
to publish his poems by subscription ! " I was pretty confident 
my poems would meet with some applause ; but at the worst, 
the roaf of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, 
and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget ne- 
glect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I got subscrip- 
tions for about three hundred and sixty. My vanity was highly 
gratified by the reception I met with from the public ; and be- 
sides, I pocketed, all expenses deducted, near twenty pounds. 
This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of inden- 
turing myself for want of money to procure my passage. As 



40 THE GENIUS AND 



soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me 
to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first ship that 
was to sail for the Clyde, < For hungry ruin had me in the 
wind.' " The ship sailed ; but Burns was still at Mossgiel, for 
his strong heart could not tear itself away from Scotland, and 
some of his friends encouraged him to hope that he might be 
made a gauger ! In a few months he was about to be hailed, 
by the universal acclamation of his country, a great National 
Poet. 

But the enjoyment of his fame all round his birth-place, " the 
heart and the main region of his song," intense as we know it 
was, though it assuaged, could not still the troubles of his heart ; 
his life amidst it all was as hopeless as when it was obscure ; 
" his chest was on its road to Greenock, where he was to embark 
in a few days for America," and again he sung 

" Farewell old Coila's hills and dales, 
Her heathy moors and winding vales, 
The scenes where wretched fancy roves, 
Pursuing past unhappy loves. 
Farewell my friends, farewell my foes, 
My peace with these, my love with those — 
The bursting tears my heart declare, 
Farewell the bonny banks of Ayr ;" 

when a few words from a blind old man to a country clergy- 
man kindled within him a new hope, and set his heart on fire ; 
and while 

" November winds blew loud wi' angry sugh," 

" I posted away to Edinburgh without a single acquaintance, or 
a single letter of introduction. The baneful star that* had so 
long shed its blasting influence on my zenith, for once made a 
revolution to the Nadir." 

At first, Burns was stared at with such eyes as people open 
wide who behold a prodigy ; for though he looked the rustic, 
and his broad shoulders had the stoop that stalwart men ac- 
quire at the plough, his swarthy face was ever and anon illu- 
mined with the look that genius alone puts off and on, and that 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 41 

comes and goes with a new interpretation of imagination's 
winged words. For a week or two he had lived chiefly with 
some Ayrshire acquaintances, and was not personally known 
to any of the leading men. But as soon as he came forward, 
and was seen and heard, his name went through the city, and 
people asked one another, " Have you met Burns?" His de- 
meanor among the Magnates, was not only unembarrassed but 
dignified, and it was at once discerned by the blindest that he 
belonged to the aristocracy of nature. " The idea which his 
conversation conveyed of the power of his mind, exceeded, if 
possible, that which is suggested by his writings. Among the 
poets whom I have happened to know, I have been struck, in 
more than one instance, with the unaccountable disparity be- 
tween their general talents, and the occasional aspirations of 
their more favored moments. But all the faculties of Burns's 
mind were, as far as I could judge, equally vigorous \ and his 
predilections for poetry were rather the result of his own enthu- 
siastic and impassioned temper, than of a genius exclusively 
adapted to that species of composition." Who those poets were, 
of occasional inspiration and low general talents, and in conver- 
sation felt to be of the race of the feeble, Dugald Stewart had 
too much delicacy to tell us ; but if Edinburgh had been their 
haunt, and theirs the model of the poetical character in the judg- 
ment of her sages, no wonder that a new light was thrown on 
the Philosophy of the Human Mind by that of Robert Burns. 
For his intellectual faculties were of the highest order, and 
though deferential to superior knowledge, he spoke on all sub- 
jects he understood, and they were many, with a voice of deter- 
mination, and when need was, of command. It was not in the 
debating club in Tarbolton alone, about which so much non- 
sense has been prosed, that he had learned eloquence ; he had 
been long giving chosen and deliberate utterance to all his 
bright ideas and strong emotions \ they were all his own, or he 
had made them his own by transfusion ; and so, therefore, was 
his speech. Its fount was in genius, and therefore could not 
run dry — a flowing spring that needed neither to be fanged nor 
pumped. As he had the power of eloquence, so had he the will, 
the desire, the ambition to put it forth ; for he rejoiced to carry 



42 THE GENIUS AND 



with him the sympathies of his kind, and in his highest moods 
he was not satisfied with their admiration without their love. 
There never beat a heart more alive to kindness. To the wise 
and good, how eloquent his gratitude ! to Glencairn, how imper- 
ishable ! This exceeding tenderness of heart often gave such 
pathos to his ordinary talk, that he even melted common-place 
people into tears ! Without scholarship, without science, with 
not much of what is called information, he charmed the first 
men in a society equal in all these to any at that time in Eu- 
rope. The scholar was happy to forget his classic lore, as he 
listened, for the first time, to the noblest sentiments flowing from 
the lips of a rustic, sometimes in his own Doric, divested of all 
offensive vulgarity, but oftener in language which, in our north- 
ern capital, was thought pure English, and comparatively it was 
so, for in those days the speech of many of the most distin- 
guished persons would have been unintelligible out of Scotland, 
and they were proud of excelling in the use of their mother 
tongue. The philosopher wondered that the peasant should 
comprehend intuitively truths that had been established, it was 
so thought, by reasoning demonstrative or inductive ; as the 
illustrious Stewart, a year or two afterwards, wondered how 
clear an idea Burns the Poet had of Alison's True Theory of 
Taste. True it is that the great law of association has by no 
one been so beautifully stated in a single sentence as by Burns : 
" That the martial clangor of a trumpet had something in it 
vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle 
of a Jews'-harp ; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when 
the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was 
infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stalk of 
the burdock ; and that from something innate and independent 
of all associations of ideas — these I had set down as irrefra- 
gable orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith." 
The man of wit — aye even Harry Erskine himself — and a wit- 
tier than he never charmed social life — was nothing loth, with 
his delightful amenity, to cease for a while the endless series of 
anecdotes so admirably illustrative of the peculiarities of na- 
tions, orders, or individuals, and almost all of them created or 
vivified by his own genius, that the most accomplished compa- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 43 

nies might experience a new pleasure from the rich and racy- 
humor of a natural converser fresh from the plough. 

And how did Burns bear all this, and much besides even more 
trying ? For you know that a duchess declared that she had 
never before in all her life met with a man who so fairly carried 
her off her feet. Hear Professor Stewart : " The attentions he 
received during his stay in town, from all ranks and descrip- 
tions of persons, were such as would have turned any head but 
his own. I cannot say that I could perceive any unfavorable 
effect which they left on his mind. He retained the same sim- 
plicity of manners and appearance which had struck me so 
forcibly when I first saw him in the country ; nor did he seem 
to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank 
of his new acquaintance." In many passages of his letters to 
friends who had their fears, Burns expressed entire confidence in 
his own self-respect, and in terms the most true and touching ; 
as, for example, to Dr. Moore : " The hope to be admired for 
ages is, in by far the greater part of those who even were au- 
thors of repute, an unsubstantial dream. For my part, my 
first ambition was, and still is, to please my compeers, the rustic 
inmates of the hamlet, while ever-changing language and man- 
ners shall allow me to be relished and understood." And to his 
venerated friend Mrs. Dunlop, he gives utterance, in the midst 
of his triumphs, to dark forebodings, some of which were but 
too soon fulfilled ! " You are afraid that I shall grow intoxi- 
cated with my prosperity as a poet. Alas ! Madam, I know 
myself and the world too well. I assure you, Madam, I do not 
dissemble, when I tell you I tremble for the consequences. The 
novelty of a poet in my obscure situation, without any of those 
advantages which are reckoned necessary for that character, at 
least at this time of day, has raised a partial tide of public no- 
tice, which has borne me to a height where I am feeling abso- 
lutely certain my abilities are inadequate to support me ; and 
too surely do I see that time, when the same tide will leave me, 
and recede, perhaps, as far below the mark of truth. I do not 
say this in ridiculous affectation of self-abasement and modesty. 
I have studied myself, and know what ground I occupy ; and 
however a friend or the world may differ from me in that par- 



44 THE GENIUS AND 



ticular, I stand for my own opinion in silent resolve, with all the 
tenaciousness of property. I mention this to you once for all, to 
disburthen my mind, and I do not wish to hear or say more about 
it. But, 

1 When proud fortune's ebbing tide recedes,' 

you will bear me witness, that, when my bubble of fame was at 
the highest, I stood, unintoxicated with the inebriating cup in 
my hand, looking forward with rueful resolve to the hastening 
time when the blow of Calumny should dash it to the ground 
with all the eagerness of vengeful triumph/' 

Such equanimity is magnanimous ; for though it is easy to 
declaim on the vanity of fame, and the weakness of them who 
are intoxicated with its bubbles, the noblest have still longed for 
it, and what a fatal change it has indeed often wrought on the 
simplicity and sincerity of the most gifted spirits ! There must 
be a moral grandeur in his character who receives sedately the 
unexpected, though deserved ratification of his title to that 
genius whose empire is the inner being of his race, from the 
voice of his native land uttered aloud through all her regions, 
and harmoniously combined of innumerable tones all expressive 
of a great people's pride. Make what deductions you will from 
the worth of that " All hail ! " and still it must have sounded in 
Burns's ears as a realization of that voice heard by his prophetic 
soul in the " Vision." 

" All. Hail ! my own inspired bard ! 
I taught thy manners-painting strains, 
The loves, the ways of simple swains, 
Till now, o'er all my wide domains 

Thy Fame extends ! " 

Robert Burns was not the man to have degraded himself ever- 
lastingly, by one moment's seeming slight or neglect of friends, 
new or old, belonging either to his own condition, or to a rank 
in life somewhat. higher perhaps than his own, although not ex- 
actly to that " select society " to which the wonder awakened by 
his genius had given him a sudden introduction. Persons in 
that middle or inferior rank were his natural, his best, and his 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 45 



truest friends ; and many of them, there can be no doubt, were 
worthy of his happiest companionship either in the festal hour 
or the hour of closer communion. He had no right, with all 
his genius, to stand aloof from them, and with a heart like his 
he had no inclination. Why should he have lived exclusively 
with lords and ladies — paper or land lords — ladies by descent or 
courtesy — with aristocratic advocates, philosophical professors, 
clergymen, wild or moderate, Arminian or Calvinistic ? Some 
of them were among the first men of their age ; others were 
doubtless not inerudite, and a few not unwitty in their own es- 
teem ; and Burns greatly enjoyed their society, in which he met 
with an admiration that must have been to him the pleasure of 
a perpetual triumph. But more of them were dull and pom- 
pous ; incapable of rightly estimating or feeling the power of 
his genius ; and when the glitter and the gloss of novelty was 
worn off before their shallow eyes, from the poet who bore them 
all down into insignificance, then no doubt they began to get 
offended and shocked with his rusticity or rudeness, and sought 
refuge in the distinctions of rank, and the laws, not to be violat- 
ed with impunity, of " select society." The patronage he re- 
ceived was honorable, and he felt it to be so ; but it was still 
patronage ; and had he, for the sake of it or its givers, forgotten 
for a day the humblest, lowest, meanest of his friends, or even 
his acquaintances, how could he have borne to read his own two 
bold lines — 

" The rank is but the guinea stamp, 
The man's the gowd for a' that ? " 

Besides, we know from Burns's poetry what was then the char- 
acter of the people of Scotland, for they were its materials, its 
staple. Her peasantry were a noble race, and their virtues 
moralized his song. The inhabitants of the towns were of the 
same family — the same blood— one kindred — and many, most 
of them, had been born, or in some measure bred, in the coun- 
try. Their ways of thinking, feeling, and acting were much 
alike ; and the shopkeepers of Edinburgh and Glasgow were as 
proud of Robert Burns, as the ploughmen and shepherds of 
Kyle and the Stewartry. He saw in them friends and brothers. 



46 THE GENIUS AND 



Their admiration of him was, perhaps, fully more sincere and 
heartfelt, nor accompanied with less understanding of his merits^ 
than that of persons in higher places ; and most assuredly among 
the respectable citizens of Edinburgh Burns found more lasting 
friends than he ever did among her gentry and noblesse. Nor 
can we doubt, that then as now, there were in that order great 
numbers of men of well cultivated minds, whom Burns, in his 
best hours, did right to honor, and who were perfectly entitled 
to seek his society, and to open their hospitable doors to the 
brilliant stranger. That Burns, whose sympathies were keen 
and wide, and who never dreamt of looking down on others as 
beneath him, merely because he was conscious of his own vast 
superiority to the common run of men, should have shunned or 
been shy of such society, would have been something altogether 
unnatural and incredible ; nor is it at all wonderful or blame- 
able that he should occasionally even have much preferred such 
society to that which has been called " more select," and there- 
fore above his natural and proper condition. Admirably as he 
in general behaved in the higher circles, in those humbler ones 
alone could he have felt himself completely at home. His de- 
meanor among the rich, the great, the learned, or the wise, must 
often have been subject to some little restraint, and all restraint 
of that sort is ever painful ; or, what is worse still, his talk must 
sometimes have partaken of display. With companions and 
friends, who claimed no superiority in anything, the sensitive 
mind of Burns must have been at its best and happiest, because 
completely at its ease, and free movement given to the play of 
all its feelings and faculties ; and in such companies we cannot 
but believe that his wonderful conversational powers shone forth 
in their most various splendor. He must have given vent there 
to a thousand familiar fancies, in all their freedom and all their 
force, which, in the fastidious society of high life, his imagina- 
tion must have been too much fettered even to conceive ; and 
which, had they flowed from his lips, would either not have been 
understood, or would have given offence to that delicacy of 
breeding which is often hurt even by the best manners of those 
whose manners are all of nature's teaching, and unsubjected 
to the salutary restraints of artificial life. Indeed, we know 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 47 

that Bums sometimes burst suddenly and alarmingly the re- 
straints of " select society ; " and that on one occasion he called 
a clergyman an idiot for misquoting Gray's Elegy — a truth that 
ought not to have been promulgated in presence of the parson, 
especially at so early a meal as breakfast : and he confesses in 
his most confidential letters, though indeed he was then writing 
with some bitterness, that he never had been truly and entirely 
happy at rich men's feasts. If so, then never could he have 
displayed there his genius in full power and lustre. His noble 
rage must in some measure have been repressed — the genial 
current of his soul in some degree frozen. He never was, never 
could be, the free, fearless, irresistible Robert Burns that nature 
made him — no, not even although he carried the Duchess of 
Gordon off her feet, and silenced two Ex-Moderators of the 
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. 

Burns, before his visit to Edinburgh, had at all times and 
places been in the habit of associating with the best men of his 
order — rthe best in everything, in station, in manners, in moral 
and intellectual character. Such men as William Tell and 
Hofer, for example, associated with in Switzerland and the 
Tyrol. Even the persons he got unfortunately too well ac- 
quainted with (but whose company he soon shook off), at Irvine 
and Kirk-Oswald — smugglers and their adherents, were, though 
a lawless and dangerous set, men of spunk, and spirit, and 
power, both of mind and body ; nor was there anything the least 
degrading in an ardent, impassioned, and imaginative youth be- 
coming for a time rather too much attached to such daring, and 
adventurous, and even interesting characters. They had all a 
fine strong poetical smell of the sea, mingled to precisely the 
proper pitch with that of the contraband. As a poet Burns 
must have been much the better of such temporary associates ; 
as a man, let us hope, notwithstanding Gilbert's fears, not greatly 
the worse. The passions that boiled in his blood would have 
overflowed his life, often to disturb, and finally to help to destroy 
him, had there never been an Irvine and its sea-port. But 
Burns's friends, up to the time he visited Edinburgh, had been 
chiefly his admirable brother, a few of the ministers round 
about, farmers, ploughmen, farm-servants, and workers in the 



48 THE GENIUS AND 



winds of heaven blowing over moors and mosses, cornfields and 
meadows beautiful as the blue skies themselves ; and if you call 
that low company, you had better fling your copy of Burns, 
Cottar's Saturday Night, Mary in Heaven, and all, into the fire. 
He, the noblest peasant that ever trod the greensward of Scot- 
land, kept the society of other peasants, whose nature was like 
his own ; and then, were the silken-snooded maidens whom he 
wooed on lea-rig and 'mang the rigs o' barley, were they who 
inspired at once his love and his genius, his passion and his 
poetry, till the whole land of Coila overflowed with his immortal 
song, — so that now to the proud native's ear every stream mur- 
murs a music not its own, given it by sweet Robin's lays, and 
the lark more lyrical than ever seems singing his songs at the 
gates of heaven for the shepherd's sake, as through his half- 
closed hand he eyes the musical mote in the sunshine, and 
remembers him who " sung her new- wakened by the daisy's 
side," — were they, the blooming daughters of Scotia, we de- 
mand of you on peril of your life, low company and unworthy 
of Robert Burns ? 

As to the charge of liking to be what is vulgarly called " cock 
of the company," what does that mean when brought against 
such a man ? In what company, pray, could not Burns, had he 
chosen it, and he often did choose it, have easily been the first ? 
No need had he to crow among dunghills. If you liken him to 
a bird at all, let it be the eagle, or the nightingale, or the bird 
of Paradise. James Montgomery has done this in some exqui- 
site verses, which are clear in our heart, but indistinct in our 
memory, and therefore we cannot adorn our pages with their 
beauty. The truth is, that Burns, though when his heart 
burned within him, one of the most eloquent of men that ever 
set the table in a roar or a hush, was always a modest, often 
a silent man, and he would sit for hours together, even in com- 
pany, with his broad forehead on his hand, and his large lamp- 
ing eyes sobered and tamed, in profound and melancholy thought. 
Then his soul would " spring upwards like a pyramid of fire," 
and send " illumination into dark deep holds," or brighten the 
brightest hour in which Feeling and Fancy ever flung their 
united radiance over the common ongoings of this our common- 



• CHARACTER OF BURNS. 49 

place world and e very-day life. Was this the man to desire, 
with low longings and base aspirations, to shine among the ob- 
scure, or rear his haughty front and giant stature among pig- 
mies ? He who 

" walked in glory and in joy, 
Following his plough upon the mountain-side ;" 

he who sat in glory and in joy at the festal board, when mirth 
and wine did most abound, and strangers were strangers no more 
within the fascination of his genius, for 

" One touch of nature makes the whole world kin ;" 

or at the frugal board, surrounded by his wife and children, and 
servants, lord and master of his own happy and industrious 
home — the frugal meal, preceded and followed by thanksgiving 
to the Power that spread his table in the barren places ? 

Show us any series of works in prose or verse, in which 
man's being is so illustrated as to lay it bare and open for the 
benefit of man, and the chief pictures they contain, drawn from 
"select society. " There are none such; and for this reason, 
that in such society there is neither power to paint them, nor 
materials to be painted, nor colors to lay on, till the canvas shall 
speak a language which all the world as it runs may read. 
What would Scott have been, had he not loved and known the 
people ? What would his works have been, had they not shown 
the many-colored character of the people ? What would Shak- 
speare have been, had he not often turned majestically from kings, 
and " lords and dukes and mighty earls," to their subjects and 
vassals and lowly bondsmen, and " counted the beatings of lonely 
hearts " in the obscure but impassioned life that stirs every nook 
of this earth where human beings abide ? What would Words- 
worth have been, had he disdained, with his high intellect and 
imagination, " to stoop his anointed head" beneath the wooden 
lintel of the poor man's door ? His Lyrical Ballads, " with all 
the innocent brightness of the new-born day, 5 ' had never 
charmed the meditative heart. His " Church-Yard among the 
Mountains" had never taught men how to live and how to die. 
5 



50 THE GENIUS AND 



These are men who have descended from aerial heights into the 
humblest dwellings ; who have shown the angel's wing equally 
when poised near the earth, and floating over its cottaged vales, 
as when seen sailing on high through the clouds and azure 
depth of heaven, or hanging over the towers and temples of 
great cities. They shunned not to parley with the blind beggar 
by the way-side ; they knew how to transmute, by divinest al- 
chemy, the base metal into the fine gold. Whatever company 
of human beings they have mingled with, they lend it colors, 
and did not receive its shades ; and hence their mastery over the 
" wide soul of the world dreaming of things to come." Burns 
was born, bred, lived, and died in that condition of this mortal 
life to which they paid but visits \ his heart lay wholly there ; 
and that heart, filled as it was with all the best human feelings, 
and sometimes with thoughts divine, had no fears about entering 
into places which timid moralists might have thought forbidden 
and unhallowed ground, but which he, wiser far, knew to be 
inhabited by creatures of conscience, bound there often in thick 
darkness by the inscrutable decrees of God. 

For a year and more after the publication of the Edinburgh 
Edition, Burns led a somewhat roving life, till his final settlement 
with Creech. He had a right to enjoy himself; and it does not 
appear that there was much to blame in his conduct either in 
town or country, though he did not live upon air nor yet upon 
water. There was much dissipation in those days — much hard 
drinking — in select as well as in general society, in the best as 
well as in the worst ; and he had his share of it in many cir- 
cles—but never in the lowest. His associates were all honor- 
able men, then, and in after life ; and he left the Capital in pos- 
session of the respect of its most illustrious citizens. Of his 
various tours and excursions there is little to be said ; the birth- 
places of old Scottish Songs he visited in the spirit of a religious pil- 
grim ; and his poetical fervor was kindled by the grandeur of the 
Highlands. He had said to Mrs. Dunlop, " I have no dearer 
aim than to have it in my power, unplagued with the routine of 
business, for which, heaven knows ! I am unfit enough, to make 
leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia ; to sit on the fields of 
her battles, to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers, and 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 51 

to muse by the stately towers or venerable ruins, once the 
honored abodes of her heroes. But these are all Utopian 
thoughts ; I have dallied long enough with life ; 't is time to be 
in earnest. I have a fond, and aged mother to care for, and 
some other bosom ties perhaps equally tender. Where the indi- 
vidual only suffers by the consequences of his own thoughtless- 
less, indolence, or folly, he may be excusable, nay, shining abili- 
ties, and some of the nobler virtues, may half sanctify a heed- 
less character: but where God and nature have intrusted the 
welfare of others to his care, where the trust is sacred, and the 
ties are dear, that man must be far gone in selfishness, or 
strangely lost to reflection, whom these connections will not rouse 
to exertion/' 

Burns has now got liberated, for ever, from "stately Edin- 
borough throned on crags/' the favored abode of philosophy and 
fashion, law and literature, reason and refinement, and has re- 
turned again into his own natural condition, neither essentially 
the better nor the worse of his city life ; the same man he was 
when " the poetic genius of his. country found him at the plough 
and threw her inspiring mantle over him." And what was he 
now to do with himself? Into what occupation for the rest of 
his days was he to settle down ? It would puzzle the most saga- 
cious even now, fifty years after the event, to say what he ought 
to have done that he did not do at that juncture, on which for 
weal or wo the future must have been so deeply felt by him to 
depend. And perhaps it might not have occurred to every one 
of the many prudent persons who have lamented over his follies, 
had he stood in Burns's shoes, to make over, unconditionally, to 
his brother one half of all he was worth. Gilbert was resolved 
still to struggle on with Mossgiel, and Robert said, " there is my 
purse." The brothers, different as they were in the constitution 
of their souls, had one and the same heart. They loved one 
another — man and boy alike; and the survivor cleared, with 
pious hands, the weeds from his brother's grave. There was a 
blessing in that two hundred pounds — and thirty years after- 
wards Gilbert repaid it with interest to Robert's widow and chil- 
dren, by an Edition in which he wiped away stains from the 
reputation of his benefactor, which had been suffered to remain 



52 THE GENIUS AND 



too long, and some of which, the most difficult too to be effaced, 
had been even let fall from the fingers of a benevolent biogra- 
pher who thought himself in duty bound to speak what he most 
mistakenly believed to be the truth. " Oh Robert ! " was all 
his mother could say on his return to Mossgiel from Edinburgh. 
In her simple heart she was astonished at his fame, and could 
not understand it well, any more than she could her own happi- 
ness and her own pride. But his affection she understood better 
than he did, and far better still his generosity ; and duly night 
and morning she asked a blessing on his head from Him who 
had given her such a son. 

" Between the men of rustic life," said Burns — so at least it 
:s reported — " and the polite world I observed little difference. 
?n the former, though unpolished by fashion, and unenlightened 
by science, I have found much observation and much intelli- 
gence. But a refined and accomplished woman was a thing 
altogether new to me, and of which I had formed but a very in- 
adequate idea." One of his biographers seems to have believed 
that his love for Jean Armour, the daughter of a Mauchline 
mason, must have died away under these more adequate ideas 
of the sex along with their corresponding emotions ; and that he 
now married her with reluctance. Only think of Burns taking 
an Edinburgh Belle to wife ! He flew, somewhat too fervently, 

" To love's willing fetters, the arms of his Jean." 

Her father had again to curse her for her infatuated love of her 
husband — for such if not by the law of Scotland — which may 
be doubtful — -Burns certainly was by the law of heaven- — and 
like a good Christian had again turned his daughter out of doors. 
Had Burns deserted her he had merely been a heartless villain. 
In making her his lawful wedded wife he did no more than any 
other man, deserving the name of man, in the same circumstan- 
ces would have done ; and had he not, he would have walked in 
shame before men, and in fear and trembling before God. But 
he did so, not only because it was his most sacred duty, but 
because he loved her better than ever, and without her would 
have been miserable. Much had she suffered for his sake, and 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 53 

he for hers; but all that distraction and despair which had 
nearly driven him into a sugar plantation, were over and gone, 
forgotten utterly, or remembered but as a dismal dream endear- 
ing the placid day that for ever dispelled it. He writes about 
her to Mrs. Dunlop and others in terms of sobriety and good 
sense — " The most placid good nature and sweetness of dispo- 
sition ; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to 
love me ; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to 
the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure " 
— these he thought in a woman might, with a knowledge of the 
scriptures, make a good wife. During the few months he was 
getting his house ready for her at Ellisland he frequently trav- 
elled, with all the fondness of a lover, the long wilderness of 
moors to Mauchline, where she was in the house of her austere 
father reconciled to her at last. And though ne has told us that 
it was his custom, in song-writing, to keep the image of some 
fair maiden before the eye of his fancy, " some bright particular 
•star," and that Hymen was not the divinity he then invoked, yet 
it was on one of these visits, between Ellisland and Mossgiel, 
that he penned under such homely inspiration as precious a love- 
ofFering as genius in the passion of hope ever laid in a virgin's 
bosom. His wife sung it to him that same evening — and indeed 
he never knew whether or no he had succeeded in any one of 
his lyrics, till he heard his words and the air together from her 
voice. 

"Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, 

I dearly like the west, 
For there the bonnie lassie lives, 

The lassie I lo'e best : 
There wild woods grow, and rivers row, 

And mony a hill between ; 
But day and night my fancy's flight 

Is ever wi' my Jean. 

" I see her in the dewy flowers, 

I see her sweet and fair : 
I hear her in the tunefu' birds, 

I hear her charm the air : 
There's not a bonny flower that springs, 

By fountain, shaw, or green, 



54 THE GENIUS AND 

There's not a bonny bird that sings, 
But minds me o' my Jean. 

" Oh blaw ye westlin winds, blaw saft 

Amang the leafy trees, 
Wi' balmy gale, frae hill and dale. 

Bring hame the laden bees ; 
And bring the lassie back to me. 

That's aye sae neat and clean ; 
Ae smile o' her wad banish care, 

Sae charming is my Jean. 

" What sighs and vows among the knowes 

Hae passed atween us twa ! 
How fond to meet, how wae to part, 

That night she gaed awa ! 
The powers aboon can only ken, 

To whom the heart is seen, 
That nane can be sae dear to rne 

As my sweet lovely Jean." 

And here we ask you who may be reading these pages, to pause 
for a little, and consider with yourselves, what up to this time 
Burns had done to justify the condemnatory judgments that have 
been passed on his character as a man by so many admirers of his 
genius as a poet ! Compared with men of ordinary worth, who 
have deservedly passed through life with the world's esteem, in 
what was it lamentably wanting ? Not in tenderness, warmth, 
strength of the natural affections ; and they are good till turned 
to evil. Not in the duties for which they were given, and which 
they make delights. Of which of these duties was he habit- 
ually neglectful ? To the holiest of them a!l next to piety to 
his Maker, he was faithful beyond most — few better kept the 
fourth commandment. His youth, though soon too impassioned, 
had been long pure. If he were temperate by necessity and 
not nature, yet he was so as contentedly as if it had been by 
choice. He had lived on meal and water with some milk, be- 
cause the family were too poor for better fare ; and yet he 
rose to labor as the lark rises to sing. 

In the corruption of our fallen nature he sinned, and, it has 
been said, became a libertine. Was he ever guilty of deliber- 
ate seduction ? It is not so recorded $ and we believe his whole 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 55 

soul would have recoiled from such wickedness : but let us not 
affect ignorance of what we all know. Among no people on the 
face of the earth is the moral code so rigid, with regard to the 
intercourse of the sexes, as to stamp with ineffaceable disgrace 
every lapse from virtue ; and certainly not among the Scottish 
peasantry, austere as the spirit of religion has always been, and 
terrible ecclesiastical censure. Hateful in all eyes is the re- 
probate — the hoary sinner loathsome ; but many a grey head is 
now deservedly reverenced that would not be so, were the mem- 
ory of all that has been repented by the Elder, and pardoned 
unto him, to rise up against him among the congregation as he 
entered the House of God. There has been many a rueful tra- 
gedy in houses that in after times " seemed asleep." How many 
good and happy fathers of families, who, were all their past lives 
to be pictured in ghastly revelation to the eyes of their wives 
and children, could never again dare to look them in the face ! 
It pleased God to give them a long life ; and they have escaped, 
not by their own strength, far away from the shadows of their 
misdeeds that are not now suffered to pursue them, but are 
chained down in the past, no more to be let loose. That such 
things were, is a secret none now live to divulge ; and though 
once known, they were never emblazoned. But Burns and men 
like Burns showed the whole world their dark spots by the very 
light of their genius ; and having died in what may almost be 
called their youth, there the dark spots still are, and men point 
to them with their fingers, to whose eyes there may seem but 
small glory in all that effulgence. 

Burns now took possession at Whitsuntide (1788) of the farm 
of Ellisland, while his wife remained at Mossgiel, completing 
her education in the dairy, till brought home next term to their 
new house, which the poet set a-building with alacrity, on a plan 
of his own, which was as simple a one as could be devised : 
kitchen and dining room in one, a double-bedded room with a 
bed-closet, and a garret. The site was pleasant, on the edge of 
a high bank of the Nith, commanding a wide and beautiful 
prospect, — holms, plains, woods, and hills, and a long reach of 
the sweeping river. While the house and offices were growing, 
he inhabited a hovel close at hand, and though occasionally giv- 



56 THE GENIUS AND 



ing vent to some splenetic humors in letters indited in his sooty- 
cabin, and now and then yielding to fits of despondency about 
the "ticklish situation of a family of children," he says to his 
friend Ainslie, "I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have 
taken is vastly for my happiness." He had to qualify himself 
for holding his excise commission by six weeks' attendance on 
the business of that profession at Ayr — and we have seen that 
he made several visits to Mossgiel. Currie cannot let him thus 
pass the summer without moralizing on his mode of life. 
" Pleased with surveying the grounds he was about to cultivate, 
and with the rearing of a building that should give shelter to his 
wife and children, and, as he fondly hoped, to his own grey 
hairs, sentiments of independence buoyed up his mind, pictures 
of domestic comfort and peace rose on his imagination ; and a 
few days passed away, as he himself informs us, the most tran- 
quil, if not the happiest, which he had ever experienced." Let 
us believe that such days were not few, but many, and that we 
need not join with the good Doctor in grieving to think that 
Burns led all the summer a wandering and unsettled life. It 
could not be stationary ; but there is no reason to think that 
his occasional absence was injurious to his affairs on the farm. 
Currie writes as if he thought him incapable of self-guidance, 
and says, "It is to be lamented that at this critical period of 
his life, our poet was without the society of his wife and chil- 
dren. A great change had taken place in his situation ; his old 
habits were broken ; and the new circumstances in which he 
was placed, were calculated to give a new direction to his 
thoughts and conduct. But his application to the cares and la- 
bors of his farm was interrupted by several visits to his family 
in Ayrshire ; and as the distance was too great for a single day's 
journey, he generally slept a night at an inn on the road. On 
such occasions he sometimes fell into company, and forgot the 
resolutions he had formed. In a little while temptation assailed 
him nearer home." This is treating Burns like a child, a per- 
son of so facile a disposition as not to be trusted without a 
keeper on the king's high- way. If he was not fit to ride by 
himself into Ayrshire, and there was no safety for him at San- 
quhar, his case was hopeless out of an asylum. A trustwor- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 57 

thy friend attended to the farm as overseer, when he was from 
home ; potatoes, grass, and grain grew, though he was away ; 
on September 9th, we find him where he ought to be, " I am 
busy with my harvest;" and on the 16th, "This hovel that I 
shelter in, is pervious to every blast that blows, and every shower 
that falls, and I am only preserved from being chilled to death by 
being suffocated with smoke. You will be pleased to hear that 
I have laid aside idle tclat, and bind every day after my reap- 
ers." Pity 'twas that there had not been a comfortable house 
ready furnished for Mrs. Burns to step into at the beginning of 
summer, therein to be brought to bed of " little Frank, who, by 
the by, I trust will be no discredit to the honorable name of 
Wallace, as he has a fine manly countenance, and a figure that 
might do credit to a little fellow two months older ; and likewise 
an excellent good temper, though when he pleases, he has a pipe 
not only quite so loud as the horn that his immortal namesake 
blew as a signal to take the pm out of Stirling bridge." 

Dear good old blind Dr. Blacklock, about this time, was anx- 
ious to know from Burns himself how he was thriving, and in- 
dited to him a pleasant epistle. 

" Dear Burns, thou brother. of my heart, 
Both for thy virtues and thy art ; 
If art it may be call'd in thee, 
Which Nature's bounty, large and free, 
With pleasure in thy heart diffuses, 
And warms thy soul with all the Muses. 
Whether to laugh with easy grace, 
Thy numbers move the sage's face, 
Or bid the softer passions rise, 
And ruthless souls with grief surprise, 
'Tis Nature's voice distinctly felt 
Through thee her organ, thus to melt. 

" Most anxiously I wish to know, 
With thee of late how matters go ; 
How keeps thy much-loved Jean her health ? 
What promises thy farm of wealth ? 
Whether the muse persists to smile, 
And all thy anxious cares beguile? 
Whether bright fancy keeps alive ? 
And how thy darling infants thrive ?" 



58 THE GENIUS AND 



It appears from his reply, that Burns had entrusted Heron 
with a letter to Blacklock, which the preacher had not delivered, 
and the poet exclaims 

" The ill-thief biaw the Heron south ! 
And never drink be near his drouth ! 
He tald mysel by word o' mouth 

He'd tak my letter ; 
I lippened to the chiel in trouth 

And bade nae better. 

" But aiblins honest Master Heron, 
Had at the time some dainty fair one, 
To ware his theologic care on, 

And holy study ; 
And tir'd o' sauls to waste his lear on, 
E'en tried the body." 

Currie says in a note, " Mr. Heron, author of the History of 
Scotland lately published, and among various other works, of a 
respectable life of our poet himself." Burns knew his character 
well ; the unfortunate fellow had talents of no ordinary kind, 
and there are many good things and much good writing in his 
life of Burns ; but respectable it is not, basely calumnious, and 
the original source of many of the worst falsehoods even now 
believed too widely to be truths, concerning the moral character 
of a man as far superior to himself in virtue as in genius. 
Burns then tells his venerated friend, that he has absolutely be- 
come a gauger. 

" Ye glaikit, gleesome, dainty damies, 
Wha by Castalia's wimpling streamies, 
Loup, sing, and lave your pretty limbies, 

Ye ken, ye ken, 
That atrang necessity supreme is, 

'Mang sons o 9 men. 

" I hae a wife and twa wee laddies, 
They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies ; 
Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is, 

I need na vaunt, 
But Pll sned besoms— thraw saugh woodies. 
Before they waa 



CHARACTER OF BURNS, 59 



"Lord help me thro' this warld o' care ! 
I'm weary sick o't late and air ! 
Not but I hae a richer share 

Than mony ithers ; 
But why should ae man better fare, 

And a' men brithers ? 

" Come, Firm Resolve, take thou the van. 
Thou stalk o' carl-hemp in man ! 
And let us mind, faint heart ne'er wan 

A lady fair ; 
Wha does the utmost that he can, 

Will whiles do mair. 

" But to conclude my silly rhyme 
(I'm scant o' verse, and scant o' time), 

To MAKE A HAPPY FIRE-SIDE CLIME 

To WEANS AND WIFE, 

That's the true pathos and sublime, 
Of human life." 

These noble stanzas were written towards the end of October, 
and in another month Burns brought his wife home to Ellisland, 
and his three children, for she had twice borne him twins. The 
happiest period of his life, we have his own words for it, was 
that winter. 

But why not say that the three years he lived at Ellisland 
were all happy, as happiness goes in this world? As happy 
perhaps as they might have been had he been placed in some 
other condition apparently far better adapted to yield him what 
all human hearts do most desire. His wife never had an hour's 
sickness, and was always cheerful as day, one of those 

" Sound healthy children of the God of heaven," 

whose very presence is positive pleasure, and whose contented- 
ness with her lot inspires comfort into a husband's heart, when 
at times oppressed with a mortal heaviness that no words could 
lighten. Burns says with gloomy grandeur, " There is a foggy 
atmosphere native to my soul in the hour of care which makes 
the dreary objects seem larger than life." The objects seen by 
imagination ; and he who suffers thus cannot be relieved by any 



60 THE GENIUS AND 



direct applications to that faculty, only by those that touch the 
heart — the homelier the more sanative, and none so sure as a 
wife's affectionate ways, quietly moving about the house affairs, 
which, insignificant as they are in themselves, are felt to be little 
truthful realities that banish those monstrous phantoms, showing 
them to be but glooms and shadows. 

And how fared the Gauger? Why he did his work. Currie 
says, " his farm no longer occupied the principal part of his 
care or his thoughts. It was not at Ellisland that he was now 
in general to be found. Mounted on horseback, this high-mind- 
ed poet was pursuing the defaulters of .the revenue among the 
hills and vales of Nithsdale ; his roving eye wandering over 
the charms of nature, and muttering his wayward fancies as he 
moved along." And many a happy day he had when thus 
riding about the country in search of smugglers of all sorts, 
zealous against all manner of contraband. He delighted in the 
broad brow of the day, whether glad or gloomy, like his own 
forehead ; in the open air whether still or stormy, like his own 
heart. " While pursuing the defaulters of the revenue," a 
gauger has not always to track them by his eyes or his nose. 
Information has been lodged of their whereabout, and he delibe- 
rately makes a seizure. Sentimentalists may see in this some- 
thing very shocking to the delicate pleasures of susceptible 
minds, but Burns did not ; and some of his sweetest lyrics, re- 
dolent of the liquid dew of youth, were committed to whitey- 
brown not scented by the rose's attar. Burns on duty was 
always as sober as a judge. A man of his sense knew better 
than to muddle his brains, when it was needful to be quick-witted 
and ready-handed too ; for he had to do with old women who 
were not to be sneezed at, and middle-aged men who could use 
both club and cutlass. 

" He held them with his glittering eye ;" 

but his determined character was not the worse of being ex- 
hibited on broad shoulders. They drooped, as you know, but 
from the habits of a strong man wjio had been a laborer from 
his youth upwards, and a gauger's life was the very one that 
might have been prescribed to a man like him, subject to low 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 61 

spirits, by a wise physician. Smugglers themselves are seldom 
drunkards — gangers not often — though they take their dram , 
your drunkards belong to that comprehensive class that chea- 
the excise. 

Then Burns was not always " mounted on horseback pursu- 
ing the defaulters of the revenue among the hills and vales of 
Nithsdale ;" he sat sometimes by himself in Friar's-Carse Her- 
mitage. 

" Thou whom chance may hither lead,— 
Be thou clad in russet weed, 
Be thou deck't in silken stole, 
Grave these counsels on thy soul. 

" Life is but a day at most, 
Sprung from night, in darkness lost ; 
Hope not sunshine ev'ry hour, 
Fear not clouds will always lower. 

" As the shades of ev'ning close, 
Beck'ning thee to long repose ; 
As life itself becomes disease, 
Seek the chimney-neuk of ease. 
There ruminate with sober thought, 
On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought ; 
And teach the sportive younkers round, 
Saws of experience, sage and sound. 
Say, man's true, genuine estimate, 
The grand criterion of his fate, 
Is not, Art thou high or low ? 
Did thy fortune ebb or flow ? 
Did many talents gild thy span ? 
Or frugal nature grudge thee one ? 
Tell them, and press it on their mind, 
As thou thyself must shortly find, 
The smile or frown of awful heav'n, 
To virtue or to vice is giv'n. 
Say to be just, and kind, and wise, 
There solid self-enjoyment lies ; 
That foolish, selfish, faithless ways, 
Lead to the wretched, vile and base. 

" Thus resign'd and quiet, creep 
To the bed of lasting sleep, 



62 THE GENIUS AND 



Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake, 
Night, where dawn shall never break, 
Till future life, future no more, 
To light and joy the good restore, 
To light and joy unknown before, 

" Stranger, go. Heav'n be thy guide ! 
Quod the beadsman of Nith-side." 

Burns acquired the friendship of many of the best families 
in the vale of Nith, at Friar's Carse, Terraughty, Blackwood, 
Closeburn, Dalswinton, Glenae, Kirkconnel, Arbigland, and other 
seats of the gentry old or new. Such society was far more en- 
joyable than that of Edinburgh, for here he was not a lion but a 
man. He had his jovial hours, and sometimes they were exces- 
sive, as the whole world knows from " the Song of the Whistle. " 
But the Laureate did not enter the lists — if he had, it is possible 
he might have conquered Craigdarroch. These were formida- 
ble orgies ; but we have heard " Oh ! Willie brewed a peck o' 
maut," sung after a presbytery dinner, the bass of the modera- 
tor giving somewhat of a solemn character to the chorus. 

But why did Burns allow his genius to lie idle — why did he 
not construct some great work, such as a Drama ? His genius 
did not lie idle, for over and above the songs alluded to, he wrote 
ever so many for his friend Johnson's Museum. Nobody would 
have demanded from him a Drama, had he not divulged his de- 
termination to compose one about " The Bruce," with the 
homely title of " Rob M'Quechan's Elshin." But Burns did 
not think himself an universal genius, and at this time writes, 
" No man knows what nature has fitted him for till he try ; and 
if after a preparatory course of some years' study of men and 
books I shall find myself unequal to the task, there is no harm 
done. Virtue and study are their own reward. I have got 
Shakspeare, and begun with him," &c. He knew that a great 
National Drama was not to be produced as easily as " The Cot- 
tar's Saturday Night;" and says, "though the rough material 
of fine writing is undoubtedly the gift of genius, the workman- 
ship is as certainly the united efforts of labor, attention, and 
pains," 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. , 63 

And here, one day between breakfast and dinner he composed 
" Tarn o' Shanter." The fact is hardly credible, but we are 
willing to believe it. Dorset only corrected his famous " To 
all ye ladies now on land, we men at sea indite/ 3 the night be- 
fore an expected engagement, a proof of his self-possession ; but 
he had been working at it for days. Dryden dashed off his 
" Alexander's Feast " in no time, but the labor of weeks was 
bestowed on it before it assumed its present shape. " Tarn o' 
Shanter" is superior in force and fire to that Ode. Never did 
genius go at such a gallop— setting off at score, and making 
play, but without whip or spur, from starting to winning post. 
All is inspiration. His wife with her weans a little way aside 
among the broom watched him at work as he was striding up 
and down the brow of the Scaur, and reciting to himself like 

one demented, 

* 

" Now Tarn, Tarn ! had they been queans, 
A' plump and strapping, in their teens ; 
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen? 
Been snaw- white seventeen hunder linen ! 
Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, 
That ance were plush, o' guid blue hair, 
. ■' . I wad hae gi'n them aff my hurdies, 

For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies !" 

His bonnie Jean must have been sorely perplexed — -but she 
was familiar with all his moods, arid like a good wife left him 
to his cogitations. It is " all made out of the builder's brain ;' ? 
for the story that suggested it is no story after* all, the dull lie of 
a drunkard dotard. From the poet's imagination it came forth 
a perfect poem, impregnated with the native spirit of Scottish 
superstition. Few or none of our old traditionary tales of 
witches are very appalling — they had not their origin in the 
depths of the people's heart — there is a meanness in their mys- 
teries — the ludicrous mixes with the horrible — much matter 
there is for the poetical, and more perhaps for the picturesque — 
but the pathetic is seldom found there — and never — for Shaks- 
peare we fear was not a Scotsman — the sublime. Let no man 
therefore find fault with " Tarn o' Shanter," because it strikes not 



64 THE GENIUS AND 



a deeper chord. It strikes a chord that twangs strangely, and we 
know not well what it means. To vulgar eyes, too, were such 
unaccountable on-goings most often revealed of old : such seers 
were generally doited or dazed — half-born idiots or neerdoweels 
in drink. Had Milton's Satan shown his face in Scotland, folk 
either would not have known him, or thought him mad. The 
devil is much indebted to Burns for having raised his character 
without impairing his individuality — 

" thou ! whatever title suit thee, 
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie, 
Wha in yon cavern grim an' sootie, 

Closed under hatches, 
Spairges about the brumstane cootie, 

To scaud poor wretches. 

" Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee, 
An' let poor damned bodies be ; 
I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie, 

E'en to a deHl, 
To skelp an' scaud poor dogs like me, 

An' hear us squeel ?" 

This is conciliatory ; and we think we see him smile. We 
can almost believe for a moment, that it does give him no great 
pleasure, that he is not inaccessible to pity, and at times would 
fain devolve his duty upon other hands, though we cannot expect 
him to resign. The poet knows that he is the Prince of the 
Air. 

" Great is thy pow'r an' great thy fame ; 
Far kend and noted is thy name ; 
An' tho' yon lowin heugh's thy hame, 

Thou travels far ; 
An' faith ! thou's neither lag nor lame, 

Nor blate nor scaur. 

" Whyles, ranging like a roarin lion, 
For prey, a' holes an' corners try-in' ; 
Whyles on the strong-wing'd tempest fTyin', 

Tirling the kirks ; 
Whyles, in the human bosom prying, 

Unseen thou lurks ? 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 65 

That is magnificent — Milton's self would have thought so — 
and it could have been written by no man who had not studied 
scripture. The Address is seen to take ; the Old Intrusionist is 
glorified by "tirling the kirks; " and the poet thinks it right to 
lower his pride. 

" Tve heard my reverend Grannie say, 

In lanely glens ye like to stray : 
Or where auld-ruin'd castles, grey, 

Nod to the moon, 
Ye fright the nightly wand'rer's way, 

Wi' eldritch croon. 

" When twilight did my Grannie summon 
To say her prayers, douce, honest woman ! 
Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin, 

Wi' eerie drone ; 
Or, rustlin' through the boortrees comin' 
Wi' heavy groan. 

" Ae dreary, windy, winter night, 
The stars shot down wi' sklentin' light, 
Wi' you, mysel, I gat a fright, 

Ayont the lough ; 
Ye, like a rash-bush, stood in sight, 

Wi' waving sugh." 

Throughout the whole Address, the elements are so combined 
in him, as to give the world " assurance o' a deil ; " but then it 
is the Deil of Scotland. 

Just so in " Tarn o J Shanter." We know not what some great 
German genius like Goethe might have made of him ; but we 
much mistake the matter, if " Tarn o' Shanter " at Alloway 
Kirk be not as exemplary a piece of humanity as Faustus on 
May-day Night upon the Hartz Mountains. Faust does not well 
know what he would be at, but Tarn does ; and though his views 
of human life be rather hazy, he has glimpses given him of the 
invisible world. His wife — but her tongue was no scandal — 
calls him 

" A skellum, 
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum ; 
That frae November till October, 
Ae market-day thou was nae sober, 
That ilka melder, wi' the miller, 
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller ; 
6 



66 THE GENIUS AND 



That ev'ry naig was ca'd a shoe on, 
The smith and thee gat roaring fou on, 
That at the L — d's house, ev'n on Sunday, 
Thou drank wi' Kirton Jean till Monday. 
She prophesy'd, that late or soon, 
Thou would be found deep drown'd in Doon ; 
Or catch'd wi' v/arlocks in the mirk, 
By Alloway's auid haunted kirk." 

That is her view of the subject ; but what is Tarn's ? The same 
as Wordsworth's, — " He sits down to his cups, while the storm 
is roaring, and heaven and earth are in confusion ; the night is 
driven on by song and tumultuous noise ; laughter and jests 
thicken as the beverage improves upon the palate ; conjugal 
fidelity archly bends to the service of general benevolence ; sel- 
fishness is not absent, but wearing the mask of social cordiality ; 
and while these various elements of humanity are blended into 
one proud and happy composition of elated spirits, the anger of 
the tempest without doors only heightens and sets off the enjoy- 
ment within. I pity him who cannot perceive that, in all this, 
though there was no moral purpose, there is a moral effect. 

e Kings may be blest but Tarn was glorious, 
O'er a' the ills of life victorious.' 

What a lesson do these words convey of charitable indulgence 
for the vicious habits of the principal actor in the scene and of 
those who resemble him ! Men who, to the rigidly virtuous, are 
objects almost of loathing, and whom therefore they cannot 
serve. The poet, penetrating the unsightly and disgusting sur- 
faces of things, has unveiled, with exquisite skill, the finer ties 
of imagination and feeling that often bind those beings to prac- 
tices productive of much unhappiness to themselves and to those 
whom it is their duty to cherish ; and as far as he puts the reader 
into possession of this intelligent sympathy, he qualifies him for 
exercising a salutary influence over the minds of those who are 
thus deplorably deceived." 

We respectfully demur from the opinion of this wise and be- 
nign judge, that " there was no moral purpose in all this, though 
there is a moral effect." So strong was his moral purpose and 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 67 

so deep the moral feeling moved within him by the picture he 
had so vividly imagined, that Burns pauses, in highest moral 
mood, at the finishing touch, 

" Kings may be blest but Tarn was glorious ; " 

and then, by imagery of unequalled loveliness, illustrates an 
universal and everlasting truth : 

" But pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed 
Or like the snow-falls in the river, 
A moment white — then melts for ever ; 
Or like the borealis race, 
That flit ere you can point their place ; 
Or like the rainbow's lovely form, 
Evanishing amid the storm." 

Next instant he returns to Tarn ; and, humanized by that ex- 
quisite poetry, we cannot help being sorry for him " mountin' his 
beast in sic a night/' At the first clap of thunder he forgets 
Souter Johnny — how "conjugal fidelity archly bent to the ser- 
vice of general benevolence " — such are the terms in which the 
philosophical Wordsworth speaks of 

" The landlady and Tarn grew gracious ; 
Wi' favors, secret, sweet, and precious :" 

and as the haunted Ruin draws nigh, he remembers not' only 
Kate's advice but her prophecy. He has passed by some fear- 
ful places ; at the slightest touch of the necromancer, how fast 
one after another wheels by, telling at what a rate Tarn rode ! 
And we forget that we are not riding behind him, 

" When, glimmering thro 5 the groaning trees, 
Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze !" 

We defy any man of woman born to tell us who these witches 
and warlocks are, and why the devil brought them here into 
Alloway-Kirk. True 

" This night a child might understand, 
The deil had business on his hand ;" 



68 THE GENIUS AND 



"but that is not the question — the question is what business? 
Was it 3, ball given him on the anniversary of the Fall ? 

" There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast ; 
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large, 
To gie them music was his charge :" 

and pray who is to pay the piper ? We fear that young witch 
Nannie ! 

" For Satan glow'r'd, and fidged fu' fain, 
And hotch'd and blew wi' might and main :" 

and this may be the nuptial night of the Prince — for that tyke 
is he — of the Fallen Angels ! 

How was Tain able to stand the sight, " glorious and heroic" 
as he was, of the open presses ? 

" Coffins stood round like open presses, 
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses ; 
And by some devilish cantraip slight, 
Each in its cauld hand held a light." 

Because show a man some sight that is altogether miraculously 
dreadful, and he either faints or feels no fear. Or say rather, 
let a man stand the first glower at it, and he will make compar- 
atively light of the details. There was Auld Nick himself, 
there was no mistaking him, and there were 

" Wither' d beldams, auld and droll, 
Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, 
Lowping an' flinging — " 

to subh dancing what cared Tarn who held the candle ? He 
was bedevilled, bewarlocked and bewitched, and therefore 

" Able 
To note upon the haly table, 
A murderer's banes in gibbet aims ; 
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns ; 
A thief, new-cutted frae a rape, 
Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape ; 
Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red rusted ; 
Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted ; 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 69 

A garter, which a babe had strangled ; 
A knife, a father's throat had mangled, 
Whom his ain son o 5 life bereft, 
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft." 

This collection has all the effect of a selection. The bodies 
were not placed there ; but following each other's heels, they 
stretched themselves out of their own accord upon the haly ta- 
ble. They had received a summons to the festival, which mur- 
derer and murdered must obey. But mind ye, Tarn could not 
see what you see. Who told him that that garter had strangled 
a babe ? That that was a parricide's knife ? Nobody — and 
that is a flaw. For Tarn looks with his bodily eyes only, and 
can know only what they show him ; but Burns knew it. and 
believed Tarn knew it too ; and we know it for Burns tells us, 
and we believe Tam as wise as ourselves ; for we almost turn 
Tarn — the poet himself being the only real warlock of them all. 

You know why that Haly Table is so pleasant to the apples 
of all those evil eyes ? They feed upon the dead, not merely be- 
cause they love wickedness, but because they inspire it into the 
quick. Who ever murdered his father but at the instigation of 
that " towzie tyke, black, grim, and large ?" Who but for him 
ever strangled her new-born child ? Scimitars and tomahawks ! 
Why, such weapons never were in use in Scotland. True. 
But they have long been in use in the wilderness of the western 
world, and among the orient cities of Mahoun, and his empire 
extends to the uttermost parts of the earth. 

And here we shall say a few words, which perhaps were ex- 
pected from us when speaking a little while ago of some of his 
first productions, about Burns's humorous strains, more especially 
those in which he has sung the praises of joviality and good fel- 
lowship, as it has been thought by many, that in them are con- 
spicuously displayed not only some striking qualities of his poet- 
ical genius, but likewise of his personal character. Among the 
countless number of what are called convivial songs floating in 
our literature, how few seem to have been inspired by such a 
sense and spirit of social enjoyment as men can sympathize with 
in their ordinary moods, when withdrawn from the festive board, 
and engaged without blame in the common amusements or recre- 



70 THE GENIUS AND 



ations of a busy or studious life ! The finest of these few have 
been gracefully and gaily thrown off, in some mirthful minute, 
by Shakspeare and Ben Jonson and " the Rest," inebriating the 
mind as with " divine gas " into sudden exhilaration that passes 
away not only without headache, but with heartache for a time 
allayed by the sweet afflatus. In our land, too, as in Greece of 
old, genius has imbibed inspiration from the wine-cup, and sung 
of human life in strains befitting poets who desired that their 
foreheads should perpetually be wreathed with flowers. But 
putting aside them and their little lyres, with some exceptions, 
how nauseous are the bacchanalian songs of Merry England ! 

On this topic we but touch ; and request you to recollect, 
that there are not half a dozen, if so many, drinking songs in 
all Burns. " Willie brewed a peck o' maut," is, indeed, the 
chief; and you cannot even look at it without crying, "O rare 
Rob Burns !" So far from inducing you to believe that the poet 
was addicted to drinking, the freshness and fervor of its glee 
convince you that it came gushing out of a healthful heart, in 
the exhilaration of a night that needed not the influence of the 
flowing bowl, which friendship, nevertheless, did so frequently 
replenish. Wordsworth, who has told the world that he is a 
water drinker, and in the lake country he can never be at a loss 
for his favorite beverage, regards this song with the complacency 
of a philosopher, knowing well that it is all a pleasant exagge- 
ration ; and that had the moon not lost patience and gone to bed, 
she would have seen "Rob and Allan" on their way back to 
Ellisland, along the bold banks of the Nith, as steady as a brace 
of bishops. 

Of the contest immortalized in the u Whistle, " it may be ob- 
served, that in the course of events it is likely to be as rare as 
enormous ; and that as centuries intervened between Sir Robert 
Laurie's victory over the Dane in the reign of James VI., and 
Craigdarroch's victory over Sir Robert Laurie in that of George 
III., so centuries, in all human probability, will elapse before 
another such battle will be lost and won. It is not a little 
amusing to hear good Dr. Currie on this passage in the life of 
Burns. In the text of his Memoir he says, speaking of the 
poet's intimacy with the best families in Nithsdale, " Their so- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 71 

cial parties too often seduced him from his rustic labors and his 
rustic fare, overthrew the unsteady fabric of his resolutions, 
and inflamed those propensities which temperance might have 
weakened, and prudence ultimately suppressed." In a note he 
adds in illustration, " The poem of the Whistle celebrates a 
bacchanalian event among the gentlemen of Nithsdale, where 
Burns appears as umpire. Mr. Riddell died before our bard, 
and some elegiac verses to his memory will be found in Volume 
IV. From him and from all the members of his family, Burns 
received not kindness, but friendship • and the society he met 
tvith in general at Friar's Carse was calculated to improve his 
habits, as well as his manners. Mr. Fergusson of Craigdar- 
roch, so well known for his eloquence and social habits, died soon 
after our poet. Sir Robert Laurie, the third person in the 
drama, survives ; and has since been engaged in contests of a 
bloodier nature — long may he live to fight the battles of his 
country ! (1799)." Three better men lived not in the shire ; 
but they were gentlemen, and Burns was but an exciseman ; and 
Currie, unconsciously influenced by an habitual deference to 
rank, pompously moralizes on the poor poet's "propensities, 
which temperance might have weakened, and prudence ulti- 
mately suppressed ;" while in the same breath, and with the 
same ink, he eulogises the rich squire for " his eloquence and 
social habits," so well calculated to " improve the habits, as well 
as the manners," of the bard and gauger ! Now suppose that 
" the heroes " had been not Craigdarroch, Glenriddel, and Max- 
welton, but Burns, Mitchell, and Findlater, a gauger, a super- 
visor, and a collector of excise, and that the contest had taken 
place not at Friar's-Carse, but at Ellisland, not for a time- 
honored hereditary ebony whistle, but a wooden ladle not a 
week old, and that Burns the Victorious had acquired an imple- 
ment more elegantly fashioned, though of the same materials, 
than the one taken from his mouth the moment he was born, 
what blubbering would there not have been among his biogra- 
phers ! James Currie, how exhortatory ! Josiah Walker, how 
lachrymose ! 

" Next uprose our Bard like a prophet in drink : 
* Craigdarroch, thou'lt soar when creation shall sink ! 



72 THE GENIUS AND 

But if thou would flourish immortal in rhyme, 
Come— one bottle more— and have at the sublime ! 

" Thy line, they have struggled for Freedom with Bruce, 
Shall heroes and patriots ever produce : 
So thine be the laurel, and mine be the bay ; 
The field thou hast won, by yon bright god of day S" 

How very shocking ! Then only hear in what a culpable spirit 
Burns writes to Riddel, on the forenoon of the day of battle ! — 
u Sir, Big with the idea of this important day at Friar's-Carse, I 
have invoked the elements and skies in the fond persuasion that 
they would announce it to the astonished world by some pheno- 
mena of terrific import. Yester-night, until a very late hour, 
did I wait with anxious horror for the appearance of some comet 
firing half the sky ; or aerial armies of conquering Scandina- 
vians, darting athwart the startled heavens, rapid as the ragged 
lightning, and horrid as those convulsions of nature that bury 
nations. The elements, however, seem to take the matter very 
quietly ; they did not even usher in this morning with triple suns 
and a shower of blood, symbolical of the three potent heroes, 
and the mighty claret-shed of the day. For me, as Thomson in 
his Winter says of the storm, I shall ' Hear astonished, and as- 
tonished sing.' To leave the heights of Parnassus and come to 
the humble vale of prose, I have some misgivings that I take too 
much upon me, when I request you to get your guest, Sir Robert 
Laurie, to post the two inclosed covers for me, the one of them to 
Sir William Cunninghame, of Robertland, Bart., Kilmarnock — 
the other to Mr. Allen Masterton, writing-master, Edinburgh. 
The first has a kindred claim on Sir Robert, as being a brother 
baronet, and likewise a keen Foxite ; the other is one of the 
worthiest men in the world, and a man of real genius ; so allow 
me to say, he has a fraternal claim on you. I want them franked 
for to-morrow, as I cannot get them to the post to-night. I shall 
send a servant again for them in the evening. Wishing that 
your head may be crowned with laurels to-night, and free from 
aches to-morrow, I have the honor to be, sir, your deeply-indebted 
and obedient servant, R. B." Why, you see that this " Letter/' 
and " The Whistle " — perhaps an improper poem in priggish 



CHARACTER OF BURNS, 73 

eyes, but in the eyes of Bacchus the best of triumphal odes — 
make up the whole of Burns's share in this transaction. He 
was not at the Carse. The " three potent heroes " were too 
thoroughly gentlemen to have asked a fourth to sit by with an 
empty bottle before him as umpire of that debate. Burns that 
evening was sitting with his eldest child on his knee, teaching it 
to say Dad — that night he was lying in his own bed, with bonnie 
Jean by his side — and " yon bright god of day " saluted him at 
morning on the Scaur above the glittering Nith. 

Turn to the passages in his youthful poetry, where he speaks 
of himself or others " wi ? just a drappie in their ee." Would 
vou that he had never written Death and Dr. Hornbook ? 

" The clachan yill had made me canty, 
I was na fou, but just had plenty ; 
I stacher'd whyles, but yet took tent ay 

To free the ditches ; 
An 5 hillocks, stanes, an' bushes, kenn'd ay 

Frae ghaists an' witches. 

" The rising moon began to glow'r 
The distant Cumnock hills out-owre : 
To count her horns, wi' a 5 my pow'r, 

I set mysel ; 
But whether she had three or four, 
I cou'd na tell. 

-' I was come round about the hill, 
And toddlin down on Willie's mill, 
Setting my staff wi' a' my skill, 

To keep me sicker : 
Tho' leeward whyles, against my will, 

I took a bicker. 

" I there wi' Something did forgather," &c. 

Then and there, as you learn, ensued that " celestial colloquy 
divine/' which being reported drove the doctor out of the coun- . 
try, by unextinguishable laughter, into Glasgow, where half a 
century afterwards he died universally respected. Something 
had more to say, and long before that time Burns had been 
sobered. 



74 THE GENIUS AND 



" But just as he began to tell, 
The auld kirk-hammer strak the bell 
Some wee short hour ayont the twal, 

Which rais'd us baith : 
I took the way that pleas' d mysel\ 

And sae did Death." 

In those pregnant Epistles to his friends, in which his generous 
and noble character is revealed so sincerely, he now and then 
alludes to the socialities customary in Kyle ; and the good peo- 
ple of Scotland have always enjoyed such genial pictures. 
When promising himself the purest pleasures society can afford, 
in company with " Auld Lapraik," whom he warmly praises for 
the tenderness and truthfulness of his " sangs " — 

" There was ae sang, amang the rest, 
Aboon them a' it pleased me best, 
That some kind husband had addrest 

To some sweet wife : 
It thirl'd the heart-strings thro' the breast, 
A' to the life ; " 

and when luxuriating in the joy of conscious genius holding 
communion with the native muse, he exclaims — 

" Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire, 
That's a' the learning I desire ; 
Then tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mire 
At pleugh or cart, 
My muse, though hamely in attire, 

May touch the heart;" 

where does Burns express a desire to meet his brother-bard ? 
Where but in the resorts of their fellow-laborers, when released 
from toil, and flinging weariness to the wind, they flock into the 
heart of some holiday, attired in sunshine, and feeling that life 
is life ? 

" But Mauchline race, or Mauchline fair, 
I should be proud to meet you there ; 
We'se gie ae night's discharge to care, 
If we forgather, 
An' hae a swap o s rhymin-ware 

Wi' ane anither. 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 75 

"The four-gill chap, we'se gar him clatter, 
An' kirsen him wi' reekin water ; 
Syne we'll sit down an' tak our whitter, 

To cheer our heart ; 
An' faith we'se be acquainted better 

Before we part. 

" Awa, ye selfish warly race, 
Wha think that havins, sense, an' grace, 
Ev'n love an' friendship, should give place 

To catch the plack ! 
I dinna like to see your face, 

Nor hear your crack 

" But ye whom social pleasure charms, 
Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms, 
Who hold your being on the terms, 

6 Each aid the others,' 
Come to my bowl, come to my arms, 

My friends, my brothers ! " 

Yet after all, " the four-gill chap " clattered but on paper. 
Lapraik was an elderly man of sober life, impoverished by a 
false friend in whom he had confided ; and Burns, who wore 
good clothes, and paid his tailor as punctually as the men he 
dealt with, had not much money out of seven pounds a year, to 
spend in "the change-house." He allowed no man to pay 
his " lawin," but neither was he given to treating — save the sex ; 
and in his " Epistle to James Smith," he gives a more correct 
account of his habits, when he goes thus off careeringly — 

" My pen I here fling to the door, 
And kneel : ' Ye Powers !' and warm implore, 
Tho' I should wander terra o'er 

In all her climes : 
Grant me but this — I ask no more — 

Ay rowth o' rhymes. 

" While ye are pleas'd to keep me hale, 
I'll sit down o'er my scanty meal, 
Be't water-brose, or muslin-kail, 

Wi' cheerfu' face, 
As lang's the Muses dinna fail 

To say the grace." 



76 THE GENIUS AND 



Read the " Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning Salutation to 
his Auld Mare Maggie." Not a soul but them-two-selves is in 
the stable — in the farm-yard — nor as far as we think of, in the 
house. Yes— there is one in the house — but she is somewhat in- 
firm, and not yet out of bed. Sons and daughters have long 
since been married, and have houses of their own — such of them 
as may not have been buried. The servants are employed some- 
where else out of doors — and so are the " four gallant brutes as 
e'er did draw " a moiety of Maggie's " bairn-time." The Ad- 
dress is an Autobiography. The master remembers himself, 
along with his mare — in days when she was " dappl't, sleek, and 
glaizie, a bonnie grey ;" and he " the pride o' a' the parishen." 

" That day we pranc'd wi muckle pride, 
When ye bure hame my bonnie bride ; 
An' sweet an' gracefu' she did ride, 

Wi' maiden air ! 
Kyle Stewart I could bragged wide, 

For sic a pair." 

What passages in their common life does he next select to 
" roose " mare and master ? " In tug or tow ?" In cart, plough, 
or harrow ? These all rise before him at the right time, and in 
a cheerful spirit ; towards the close of his address he grows se- 
rious, but not sad — as well he may ; and at the close, as well he 
may, tender and grateful. But the image he sees galloping, 
next to that of the Broose, comes second, because it is second 
best : 

" When thou an' I were young an' skeigh, 
An' stable-meals at fairs were dreigh, 
How thou wad prance, an' snore, an' skreigh, 

An' tak the road ! 
Town's bodies ran, and stood abeigh, 

An' ca't thee mad. 

" When thou wast corn% an 9 I was mellow, 
We took the road ay like a swallow ?" 

We do not blame the old farmer for having got occasionally 
mellow some thirty years ago — we do not blame Burns for mak- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 77 

ing him pride himself on his shame ; nay, we bless them both as 
we hear these words whispered close to the old Mare's lug : 

" Monie a sair daurk we twa hae wrought, 
An* wi' the weary war? fought ! 
An' monie an anxious day I thought 

We wad be beat ! 
Yet here to crazy age we're brought, 

Wi' something yet. 

" And think na, my auld trusty servan', 
That now perhaps thou's less deservin, 
An 5 thy auld days may end in starvin, 

For my last fou, 
A heapit stimpart, I'll reserve ane 

Laid by for you. 

" We've worn to crazy years thegither : 
We'll toyte about wi 5 ane anither ; 
Wi' tentie care I'll flit thy tether, 

To some hain'd rig, 
Whare ye may nobly rax your leather, 

Wi' sma' fatigue." 

Or will you turn to " The Twa Dogs," and hear Luath, in 
whom the best humanities mingle with the canine — the Poet's 
own colley, whom some cruel wretch murdered ; and gibbeted 
to everlasting infamy would have been the murderer, had Burns 
but known his name ? 

" The dearest comfort o' their lives, 
Their grushie weans an' faithfu' wives ; 
The prattling things are just their pride, 
That sweetens a' their fireside 

" An' whiles twalpenny worth o' nappy 
Can mak the bodies unco happy ; 
They lay aside their private cares, 
To mend the Kirk and State affairs : 
They'll talk o' patronage and priests, 
Wi' kindling fury in their breasts, 
Or tell what new taxation's comin, 
An' ferlie at the folk in Lon'on. 



78 THE GENIUS AND 



" As bleak-fac'd Hallo wmass returns, 
They get the jovial, rantin kirns, 
When rural life, o' every station, 
Unite in common recreation ; 
Love blinks, Wit slaps, an' social Mirth 
Forgets there's Care upo' the earth. 

" That merry day the year begins, 
They bar the door on frosty winds ; 
The nappy reeks wi' mantling ream ; 
An' sheds a heart-inspiring steam ; 
The luntin pipe, and sneeshin mill, 
Are handed round wi' richt guid will ; 
The cantie auld folks crackin crouse, 
The young anes rantin thro' the house, 
My heart has been sae fain to see them, 
That I for joy hae barkit wi' them." 

Yet how happens it that in the " Halloween" no mention is 
made of this source of enjoyment, and that the parties concerned 
pursue the ploy with unflagging passion through all its charms 
and spells 1 Because the festival is kept alive by the poetic 
power of superstition that night awakened from its slumber in all 
those simple souls ; and that serves instead of strong drink. 
They fly from freak to freak, without a thought but of the witch- 
eries — the means and appliances needful to make them potent ; 
this Burns knew to be nature, and therefore he delays all " crea- 
ture comforts " till the end, when the curtain has dropped on that 
visionary stage, and the actors return to the floor of their every- 
day world. Then — 

" Wi' merry sangs, an' friendly cracks, 
I wat they didna weary ; 
An' unco' tales, an' funny jokes, 

Their sports were cheap an' cheery, 
Till buttered scfns, wi fragrant lunt, 

Set a' their gabs a-steerin ; 
Syne, wi' a social glass o s strunt, 
They parted afT careerin 

Fu' blythe that night." 

We see no reason why, in the spirit of these observations, 
moralists may not read with pleasure and approbation, " The 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 79 

Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer to the Scotch Representatives 
in the House of Commons." Its political economy is as sound 
as its patriotism is stirring ; and he must be indeed a dunce who 
believes that Burns uttered it either as a defence or an encou- 
ragement of a national vice, or that it is calculated to stimulate 
poor people into pernicious habits. It is an address that Cob- 
bett, had he been a Scotsman and one of the Forty-Five, would 
have rejoiced to lay on the table of the House of Commons ; for 
Cobbett, in all that was best of him, was a kind of Burns in his 
way, and loved the men who work. He maintained the cause 
of malt, and it was a leading article in the creed of his faith 
that the element distilled therefrom is like the air they breathe, 
if the people have it not, they die. Beer may be best ; and 
Burns was the champion of beer, as well as of what bears a 
brisker name. He spoke of it in " The Earnest Cry," and like- 
wise in the " Scotch Drink," as one of the staffs of life which 
had been struck from the poor man's hand by fiscal oppression. 
Tea was then little practised in Ayrshire cottages ; and we do not 
at this moment remember the word in Burns's Poems. He threat- 
ens a rising if Ministers will not obey the voice of the People : 

" Auld Scotland has a raucle tongue ; 
t She's just a devil wi' a rung ; 

An 5 if she promise auld or young 

To tak their part, 
Tho 5 by the neck she should be strung, 
She'll no desert." 

In the Postscript, the patriotism and poetry of " The Earnest 
Cry " wax stronger and brighter — and no drunkard would dare 
to read aloud in the presence of men — by heart he never could 
get it — such a strain as this — familiar to many million ears : 

" Let half-starv'd slaves, in warmer skies, 
See future wines, rich clust'ring, rise ; 
Their lot auld Scotland ne'er envies, 

But blythe and frisky, 
She eyes her freeborn, martial boys, 

Tak aff their whisky." 



80 THE GENIUS AND 



" What tho' their Phoebus kinder warms, 
While fragrance blooms, and beauty charms ; 
When wretches range, in famish' d swarms, 

The scented groves. 
Or hounded forth, dishonor arms 

In hungry droves. 

" Their gun's a burden on their shouther ; 
They downa bide the stint o' powther ; 
Their bauldest thought's a hank'ring swither 

To stan' or rin, 
Till skeip— a shot — they're aff, a' throwther, 
To save their skin. 

" But bring a Scotsman frae his hill, 
Clap in his cheek a Highland gill, 
Say, such is Royal George's will, 

An' there's the foe, 
He has nae thought but how to kill 
Twa at a blow. 

" Nae cauld, faint-hearted doubtings tease him ; 
Death comes, wi' fearless eye he sees him ; 
Wi' bluidy hand a welcome gies him : 
An' when he fa's, 
His latest draught o' breathin lea'es him 

In faint huzzas." 

« 

These are not the sentiments of a man who " takes an enemy 
into his mouth to steal away his brains." Nor is there anything 
to condemn, when looked at in the light with which genius in- 
vests them, in the pictures presented to us in " Scotch Drink," 
of some of the familiar scenes of humble life, whether of busy 
work, or as busy recreation, and some of home-felt incidents in- 
teresting to all that live — such as " when skirlin weanies see the 
light " — animated and invigorated to the utmost pitch of tension, 
beyond the reach of the jaded spirits of the laboring poor — so 
at least the poet makes us for the time willing to believe — when 
unaided by that elixir he so fervidly sings. Who would wish 
the following lines expunged 1 Who may not, if he chooses, so 
qualify their meaning as to make them true? Who will not 
pardon the first two, if they need pardon, for sake of the last 
two that need none ? For surely you, who though guilty of no 



I 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 81 

excess, fare sumptuously every day, will not find it in your 
hearts to grudge the " poor man's wine " to the Cottar after that 
" Saturday Night " of his, painted for you to the life by his own 
son, Robert Burns ! 

" Thou clears the head o 5 doited lear ; 
Thou cheers the heart o' drooping care ; 
Thou strings the nerves o' labor sair, 

At's weary toil ; 
Thou brightens even dark despair 

W? gloomy smile. 

" Aft, clad in massy siller weed, 
Wi' gentles thou erects thy head ; 
Yet humbly kind in time o 5 need, 

The poor man's wine ; 
His wee drap parritch, or his bread, 

Thou kitchens fine." 



Gilbert, in his excellent vindication of his brothers character, 
tells us that at the time when many of those " Rhapsodies respect- 
ing drinking " were composed and first published, few people 
were less addicted to drinking than he ; and that he assumed a 
poetical character, very different from that of the man at the 
time. It has been said that Scotsmen have no humor— no per- 
ception of humor— that we are all plain matter-of-fact people- 
not without some strength of understanding — but grave to a 
degree on occasions when races more favor'd by nature are 
gladsome to an excess : and- — ■ 

" In gay delirium rob them of themselves." 

This judgment on our national characteristics implies a familiar 
acquaintance with Scottish poetry from Dunbar to Burns.. It 
would be nearer the truth — though still wide of it — -to affirm, 
that we have more humor than all the rest of the inhabitants of 
this earth besides ; but this at least is true, that unfortunately 
for ourselves, we have too much humor, and that it has sometimes 
been allowed to flow out of its proper province, and mingle itself 
with thoughts and things that ought for ever to be kept sacred in 
the minds of the people. A few words by and by on this sub- 



82 THE GENIUS AND 



ject ; meanwhile, with respect to his " Rhapsodies about Drink- 
ing," Burns knew that not only had all the states, stages, and 
phases of inebriety been humorously illustrated by the comic 
genius of his country's most popular poets, but that the people 
themselves, in spite of their deep moral and religious conviction 
of the sinfulness of intemperance, were prone to look on its 
indulgences in ever}^ droll and ludicrous aspect they could as- 
sume, according to the infinite variety of the modifications of 
individual character. As a poet dealing with life as it lay be- 
fore and around him, so far from seeking to avoid, he eagerly 
seized on these ; and having in the constitution of his own being 
as much humor and as rich as ever mixed with the higher ele- • 
ments of genius, he sometimes gave vent to its perceptions and 
emotions in strains perfectly irresistible — even to the most seri- 
ous — who had to force themselves back into their habitual and 
better state, before they could regard them with due condemna- 
tion. 

But humor in men of genius is always allied to pathos — its 
exquisite touches 

" On the pale cheek of sorrow awaken a smile, 
And illumine the eye that was dim with a tear. n 

So is it a thousand times with the humor of Burns — and we have 
seen it so in our quotations from these very " Rhapsodies. " He 
could sit with " rattling roarin' Willie" — and when he belonged 
to the Crochallan Fencibles, " he was the king of a' the core." 
But where he usually sat up late at night, during those glorious 
hard-working years, was a low loft above a stable — so low that 
he had to stoop even when he was sitting at a deal table three 
feet by two — with his " heart inditing a good matter" to a 
plough-boy, who read it iqj to the poet before they lay down on 
the same truckle-bed. 

Burns had as deep an insight as ever man had into the moral 
evils of the poor man's character, condition, and life. From 
many of them he remained free to the last ; some he suffered 
late and early. What were his struggles we know, yet we know 
but in part, before he was overcome. But it does not appear 
that he thought intemperance the worst moral evil of the people, 



CHARACTER OF BURNS, 83 

or that to the habits it forms had chiefly to be imputed their 
falling short or away from that character enjoined by the law 
written and unwritten, and without which, preserved in its great 
lineaments, there cannot be to the poor man, any more than the 
rich, either power or peace. He believed that but for " Man's 
inhumanity to man," this might be a much better earth ; that 
they who live by the sweat of their brows would wipe them with 
pride, so that the blood did but freely circulate from their hearts \ 
that creatures endowed with a moral sense and discourse of rea- 
son would follow their dictates, in preference to all solicitations 
to enjoyment from those sources that flow to them in common 
with all things that have life, so that they were but allowed the 
rights and privileges of nature, and not made to bow down to a 
servitude inexorable as necessity, but imposed, as he thought, on 
their necks as a yoke by the very hands which Providence had 
kept free ; — believing all this, and nevertheless knowing and 
feeling, often in bitterness of heart and prostration of spirit, that 
there is far worse evil, because self-originating and self-inhabit- 
ing within the invisible world of every human soul, Burns had 
no reprobation to inflict on the lighter sins of the oppressed, in 
sight of the heavier ones of the oppressor ; and when he did 
look into his own heart and the hearts of his brethren in toil 
and in trouble, for those springs of misery which are for ever well- 
ing there, and need no external blasts or torrents to lift them 
from their beds till they overflow their banks, and inundate 
ruinously life's securest pastures, he saw the Passions to which 
are given power and dominion for bliss or for bale — of them in 
his sweetest, loftiest inspirations, he sung as a poet all he felt as 
a man ; willing to let his fancy in lighter moods dally with infe- 
rior things and merry measures — even with the very meat and 
drink that sustains man who is but grass, and like the flower of 
the field flourisheth and is cut down, and raked away out of the 
sunshine into the shadow of the grave. 

That Burns did not only not set himself to dissuade poor people 
from drinking, but that he indited " Rhapsodies" about " Scotch 
Drink," and " Earnest Cries," will not, then, seem at all sur- 
prising to poor people themselves, nor very culpable even in the 
eyes of the most sober among them ; whatever may be the light 



84 THE GENIUS AND 



in which some people regard such delinquencies, your more-in- 
sorrow-than-anger moralists, who are their own butlers, and 
sleep with the key of the wine-cellar under their pillow ; his 
poetry is very dear to the people, and we venture to say that 
they understand its spirit as well as the best of those for whom 
it was not written ; for written it was for his own Order— the 
enlightened majority of Christian men. No fear of their being 
blind to its venial faults, its more serious imperfections, and if 
there they be, its sins. There are austere eyes in work-shops, 
and in the fields, intolerant of pollution ; stern judges of them- 
selves and others preside in those courts of conscience that are 
not open to the public ; nevertheless, they have tender hearts, 
and they yearn with exceeding love towards those of their breth- 
ren who have brightened or elevated their common lot. Latent 
virtues in such poetry as Bui ns's are continually revealing them- 
selves to readers, whose condition is felt to be uncertain, 
and their happiness to fluctuate with it ; adversity puts to the 
test our opinions and beliefs, equally with our habits and our 
practices ; and the most moral and religious man that ever 
worked from morning to night, that his family might have bread 
— daily from youth upwards till now he is threescore and ten — 
might approve of the sentiment of that Song, feel it in all its 
fervor, and express it in all its glee, in which age meeting with 
age, and again hand and heart linked together, the " trusty 
feres," bring back the past in a sun-burst on the present, and 
thoughtless of the future, pour out unblamed libations to the 
days " o' auld lang syne I" 

It seems to us very doubtful if any poetry could become 
popular, of which the prevalent spirit, is not in accordance with 
that of the people, as well in those qualities we grieve to call 
vices, as in those we are happy to pronounce virtues. It is not 
sufficient that they be moved for a time against their will, by 
some moral poet desirous, we shall suppose, of purifying and 
elevating their character, by the circulation of better sentiments 
than those with which they have been long familiar ; it is neces- 
sary that the will shall go along with their sympathies to preserve 
them perhaps from being turned into antipathies ; and that is not 
likely to happen, if violence be done to long. established customs 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 85 

and habits, which may have acquired not only the force, but 
something too of the sanctity, of nature. 

But it is certain that to effect any happy change in the man- 
ners or the morals of a people — to be in any degree instrumental 
to the attainment or preservation of their dearest interests — a 
Poet must deal with them in the spirit of truth ; and that he 
may do so, he must not only be conversant with their condition, 
but wise in knowledge, that he may understand what he sees, 
and whence it springs — the evil and the good. Without it, he 
can never help to remove a curse or establish a blessing ; for a 
while his denunciations or his praises may seem to be working 
wonders — his genius may be extolled to the skies — and himself 
ranked among the benefactors of his people ; but yet a little 
while, and it is seen that the miracle has not been wrought, the 
evil spirit has not been exorcised ; the plague-spot is still on the 
bosom of his unhealed country ; and the physician sinks away 
unobserved among men who have not taken a degree. 

Look, for example, at the fate of that once fashionable, for 
we can hardly call it popular, tale — " Scotland's Skaith, or the 
History of Will and Jean," with its Supplement, " The Waes 
o ? War." Hector Macneil had taste and feeling— even genius 
—and will be remembered among Scottish poets. 

" Robin Burns, in mony a ditty, 

Loudly sings in whisky's praise ; 
Sweet his sang ! the mair's the pity 
E'er on it he war'd sic lays. 

" 0' a' the ills poor Caledonia 

E'er yet pree'd, or e'er will taste, 
Brew'd in hell's black Pandemonia— 
Whisky's ill will skaith her maist." 

So said Hector Macneil of Robert Burns, in verse not quite 
so vigorous as the " Earnest Cry." It would require a deeper 
voice to frighten the " drouthy " from " Scotch Drink," if it be 
" brewed in hell." " Impressed with the baneful conse- 
quences inseparable from an inordinate use of ardent spirits 
among the lower orders of society, and anxious to contribute 
something that might at least tend to retard the contagion of so 



THE GENIUS AND 



dangerous an evil, it was conceived, in the ardor of philanthro- 
py, that a natural, pathetic story, in verse, calculated to enforce 
moral truths, in the language of simplicity and passion, might 
probably interest the uncorrupted ; and that a striking picture 
of the calamities incident to idle debauchery, contrasted with the 
blessings of industrious prosperity, might (although insufficient 
to reclaim abandoned vice) do something to strengthen and en- 
courage endangered virtue. Visionary as these fond expecta- 
tions may have been, it is pleasing to cherish the idea ; and if 
we may be allowed to draw favorable inferences from the sale 
of ten thousand copies in the short space of Jive months, why 
should we despair of success ?" The success, if we may trust 
to statistical tables, has, alas ! been small ; nor would it have 
been greater had a million copies been put into circulation. For 
the argument illustrated in the (t History of Will and Jean " 
has no foundation in nature — and proceeds on an assumption 
grossly calumnious of the Scottish character. The following 
verses used once to ring in every ear : — - 

" Wha was ance like Willie Garlace, 
Wha in neiboring town or farm ? 
Beauty's bloom shone in his fair face, 
Deadly strength was in his arm ? 

" Wha wi' Will could rin, or wrestle, 
Throw the sledge, or toss the bar ? 
Hap what would, he stood a castle, 
Or for safety or for war : 

" Warm his heart, and mild as manfu', 
Wi' the bauld he bauld wad be ; 
But to friends he had a handfu', 
Purse and service aft were free." 

He marries Jeanie Millar, a wife worthy of him, and for tnree 
years they are good and happy in the blessing of God. What 
in a few months makes drunkards of them both ? He happens 
to go once for refreshment, after a long walk, into a way-side 
public house — and from that night he is a lost man. He is de- 
scribed as entering it on his way home from a Fair — and we 
never heard of a Fair where there was no whisky — drinks 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 87 

Meg's ale or porter, and eats her bread and cheese without in- 
curring much blame from his biographer ; but his companion 
prevails on him to taste " the widow's gill " — a thing this bold 
peasant seems never before to have heard of — and infatuated 
with the novel potion, Willie Garlace, after a few feeble strug- 
gles, in which he derives no support from his previous life of 
happiness, industry, sobriety, virtue, and religion, staggers to 
destruction. Jeanie, in despair, takes to drinking too • they are 
" rouped out ;" she becomes a beggar, and he " a sodger." The 
verses run smoothly and rapidly, and there is both skill and 
power of narration, nor are touches of nature wanting, strokes 
of pathos that have drawn tears. But by what insidious witch- 
craft this frightful and fatal transformation was brought about, 
the uninspired story-teller gives no intimation— a few vulgar 
common-places constitute the whole of his philosophy — and he 
no more thinks of tracing the effects of whisky on the moral 
being — the heart — of poor Willie Garlace, than he would have 
thought of giving an account of the coats of his stomach, had 
he been poisoned to death by arsenic. " His hero " is not 
gradually changed into a beast, like the victims of Circe's en- 
chantments ; but rather resembles the Cyclops all at once mad- 
dened in his cave by the craft of Ulysses. This is an outrage 
against nature ; not thus is the sting to be taken out of " Scot- 
land's Scaith " — and a nation of drunkards to be changed into 
a nation of gentlemen. If no man be for a moment safe who 
" prees the widow's gill " the case is hopeless, and despair ad- 
mits the inutility of Excise. In the " Waes o' War " — the 
Sequel of the story — Willie returns to Scotland with a pension 
and a wooden leg, and finds Jeanie with the children in a cot- 
tage given her by " the good Buccleugh." Both have become 
as sober as church-mice. The loss of a limb, and eight pounds 
a year for life, had effectually reformed the husband, a cottage 
and one pound a quarter the wife ; and this was good Hector 
Macneil's idea of a Moral Poem ! A poem that was not abso- 
lutely to stay the plague, but to fortify the constitution against it ; 
" and if we may be allowed to draw favorable inferences from 
the sale of ten thousand copies in the short space of five months, 
why should we despair of success V 



88 THE GENIUS AND 

It is not from such poetry that any healthful influence can be 
exhaled over the vitiated habits of a people ; 

" With other ministrations, thou, Nature ! 
Healest thy wandering and distempered child ; " 

had Burns written a Tale to exemplify a Curse, Nature would 
have told him of them all ; nor would he have been in aught 
unfitted by the experiences that prompted many a genial and 
festive strain, but, on the contrary, the better qualified to give in 
"thoughts that breathe and words that burn/' some solution of 
that appalling mystery, in which the souls of good men are often 
seen hurrying and hurried along paths they had long abhorred, 
and still abhor, as may be seen from their eyes, even when they 
are rejecting all offered means of salvation, human and divine, 
and have sold their bibles to buy death. Nor would Burns have 
adopted the vulgar libel on the British army, that it was a re- 
ceptacle for drunken husbands who had deserted their wives and 
children. There have been many such recruits ; but his martial, 
loyal, and patriotic spirit would ill have brooked the thought of 
such a disgrace to the service, in an ideal picture, which his 
genius was at liberty to color at its own will, and could have 
colored brightly according to truth. " One fine summer evening 
he was at the Inn at Brownhill with a couple of friends, when 
a poor way-worn soldier passed the window : of a sudden, it 
struck the poet to call him in, and get the story of his adven- 
tures ; after listening to which, he all at once fell into one of 
those fits of abstraction, not unusual with him/' and perhaps, 
with the air of "The mill, mill O" in his heart, he composed 
" The Soldier's Return." It, too, speaks of the " waes of war ; " 
and that poor way-worn soldier, we can well believe, had given 
no very flattering account of himself or his life, either before or 
after he had mounted the cockade. Why had he left Scotland 
and Mill-mannoch on the sweet banks of the Coyle near Coylton 
Kirk ? Burns cared not why ; he loved his kind, and above all, 
his own people ; and his imagination immediately pictured a 
blissful meeting of long-parted lovers. 

" I left the lines and tented field, 
Where lang I'd been a lodger ? 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 



My humble knapsack a 3 my wealth, 
A poor but honest sodger. 

" A right leal heart was in my breast, 

A hand unstained wi' plunder , 
And for fair Scotia hame again, 

I cheery on did wander. 
I thought upon the banks o' Coil 9 

I thought upon my Nancy, 
I thought upon the witching smile, 

That caught my youthful fancy. 

" At length I reached the bonnie glen. 

Where early life I sported ; 
I passed the mill, and trysting thorn, 

Where Nancy oft I courted : 
Wha spied I but my ain dear maid, 

Down by my mother's dwelling ! 
And turned me round to hide the tear 

That in my breast was swelling." 

The ballad is a very beautiful one, and throughout how true 
to nature ! It is alive all over Scotland ; that other is dead, or 
with suspended animation ; not because " The Soldier's Return " 
is a happy, and " "Will and Jean " a miserable story ; for the 
people's heart is prone to pity, though their eyes are not much 
given to tears. But the people were told that " Will and Jean 79 
had been written for their sakes, by a wise man made melan- 
choly by the sight of their condition. The upper ranks were 
sorrowful exceedingly for the lower- — all weeping over their 
wine for them over their whisky, and would not be comforted ! 
For Hector Macneil informs them that 

" Maggie's club, wha could get nae light 
On some things that should be clear, 
Fand ere long the fau't, and ae night 
CluWd and gat the Gazetteer" 

The lower ranks read the Lamentation, for ever so many 
thousands were thrust into their hands ; but though not insensi- 
ble of their own infirmities, and willing to confess them, they rose 
up in indignation against a charge that swept their firesides of 
all that was mosf sacredly cherished there, asked who wrote 



90 THE GENIUS AND 



" The Cottar's Saturday Night ? " and declared with one voice, 
and a loud one, that if they were to be bettered by poems, it 
should be by the poems of their own Robert Burns. 

And here we are brought to speak of those Satirical composi- 
tions which made Burns famous within the bounds of more than 
one Presbytery, before the world had heard his name. In boy- 
hood and early youth he showed no symptoms of humor — he was 
no droll — dull even — from constitutional headaches, and heart- 
quakes, and mysteries not to be understood — no laughing face 
had he — the lovers of mirth saw none of its sparkles in his dark, 
melancholy looking eyes. In his autobiographical sketch he 
tells us of no funny or facetious " chap-books ; " his earliest 
reading was of the " tender and the true," the serious or the 
sublime. But from the first he had been just as susceptible and 
as observant of the comic as of the tragic — nature had given 
him a genius as powerful over smiles as tears — but as the sacred 
source lies deepest, its first inspirations were drawn thence in 
abstraction and silence, and not till it felt some assurance of its 
diviner strength did it delight to disport itself among the ludi- 
crous images that, in innumerable varieties of form and color — 
— all representative of realities — may be seen, when we choose 
to look at them, mingling with the most solemn or pathetic shows 
that pass along in our dream of life. You remember his words, 
" Thus with me began Love and Poetry. " True ; they grew 
together ; but for a long time they were almost silent — seldom 
broke out into song. His earliest love verses but poorly express his 
love — nature was then too strong within him for art which then 
was weak — and young passion, then pure but all- engrossing, 
was filling his whole soul with poetry that ere long was to find a 
tongue that would charm the world, 

It was in the Humorous, the Comic, the Satirical, that he first 
tried and proved his strength. Exulting to find that a rush of 
words was ready at his will — that no sooner flashed his fancies 
than on the instant they were embodied, he wanton'd and revelled 
among the subjects that had always seemed to him the most risi- 
ble, whatever might be the kind of laughter, simple or com- 
pound—pure mirth, or a mixture of mirth and contempt, even of 
indignation and scorn— mirth still being the chief ingredient that 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 91 

qualified the whole — and these, as you know^ were all included 
within the " Sanctimonious/ 5 from which Burns believed the Sa- 
cred to be excluded; but there lay the danger, and there the 
blame if he transgressed the holy bounds. 

His satires were unsparingly directed against certain ministers 
of the gospel, whose Calvinism he thought was not Christianity ; 
whose characters were to him odious, their persons ridiculous, 
their manners in the pulpit irreverent, and out of it absurd ; and 
having frequent opportunities of seeing and hearing them in all 
their glory, he made studies of them con amore on the spot, and 
at home from abundant materials with a master's hand elabo- 
rated finished pictures — -for some of them are no less — which, 
when hung out for public inspection in market-places, brought 
the originals before crowds of gazers transported into applause. 
Was this wicked ? Wicked we think too strong a word ; but we 
cannot say that it was not reprehensible, for to all sweeping sa- 
tire there must be some exception — and exaggeration cannot be 
truth. Burns by his irregularities had incurred ecclesiastical 
censure, and it has not unfairly been said that personal spite 
barbed the sting of his satire. Yet we fear such censure had 
been but too lightly regarded by him ; and we are disposed to 
think that his ridicule, however blameable on other grounds, was 
free from malignity, and that his genius for the comic rioted in 
the pleasure of sympathy and the pride of power. To those 
who regard the persons he thus satirized as truly belonging to 
the old Covenanters, and Saints of a more ancient time, such sa- 
tires must seem shameful and sinful ; to us who regard " Rum- 
ble John " and his brethren in no such light, they appear venial 
offences, and not so horrible as Hudibrastic. A good many years 
after Burns's death, in our boyhood we sometimes saw and heard 
more than one of those worthies, and cannot think his descrip- 
tions greatly overcharged. We remember walking one day— - 
unknown to us as a fast day — in the neighborhood of an ancient 
fortress, and hearing a noise to be likened to nothing imaginable 
on this earth but the bellowing of a buffalo fallen into a trap 
upon a tiger, which as we came within half a mile of the castle 
we discerned to be the voice of a pastor engaged in public prayer. 
His physiognomy was little less alarming than his voice, and his 



92 THE GENIUS AND 



sermon corresponded with his looks and his lungs — -the whole be- 
ing indeed an extraordinary exhibition of divine worship. We 
never can think it sinful that Burns should have been humorous 
on such a pulpiteer; and if we shudder at some of the verses 
in which he seems yet alive, it is not at the satirist. 

" From this time, I began to be known in the country as a 
maker of rhymes. Holy Willie's Prayer next made its appear- 
ance, and alarmed the kirk-session so much, that they held sev- 
eral meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, and see if any 
of it might be pointed against profane rhymers;" "and to a 
place among profane rhymers" says Mr. Lockhart, in his mas- 
terly volume, "the author of this terrible infliction had unques- 
tionably established his right." Sir Walter speaks of it as " a 
piece of satire more exquisitely severe than any which Burns ever 
afterwards wrote, but unfortunately cast in a form too daringly 
'profane to be received into Dr. Currie's collection." We have 
no wish to say one word in opposition to the sentence pronounced 
by such judges ; but has Burns here dared beyond Milton, 
Goethe, and Byron ? He puts a Prayer to the iUmighty into the 
mouth of one whom he believes to be one of the lowest of blas- 
phemers. In that Prayer are impious supplications couched in 
shocking terms, characteristic of the hypocrite who stands on a 
familiar footing with his Maker. Milton's blasphemer is a fallen 
angel, Goethe's a devil, Byron's the first murderer, and Burns's 
an elder of the kirk. All the four poets are alike guilty, or not 
guilty— unless there be in the case of one of them something 
peculiar that lifts him up above the rest, in the case of another 
something peculiar that leaves him alone a sinner. Let Milton 
then stand aloof, acquitted of the charge, not because of the 
grandeur and magnificence of his conception of Satan, but be- 
cause its high significance cannot be misunderstood by the pious, 
and that out of the mouths of the dwellers in darkness, as well 
as of the Sons of the Morning " he vindicates the ways of God 
to man." Byron's Cain blasphemes ; does Byron 1 Many have 
thoup-ht so — for thev saw, or seemed to see, in the character of 
the Cursed, as it glooms in soliloquies that are poetically sublime, 
some dark intention in its delineator to inspire doubts of the jus- 
tice of the Almighty One who inhabiteth eternity. Goethe in 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 93 

the (i Prologue in Heaven " brings Mephistopheles face to face 
with God. But Goethe devoted many years to " his great poem ? 
Faust," and in it he too, as many of the wise and good believe^ 
strove to show rising out of the blackness of darkness the attri- 
butes of Him whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity. Be it 
even so ; then, why blame Burns ? You cannot justly do so, on 
account of the " daringly profane form ?? in which " Holy Wil- 
lie's Prayer" is cast, without utterly reprobating the " Prologue 
in Heaven." 

Of the Holy Fair few have spoken with any serious reprehen- 
sion. Dr. Blair was so much taken with it that he suggested a 
well known emendation— and for our own part we have no hesi- 
tation in saying, that we see no reason to lament that it should 
have been written by the writer of the Cottar's Saturday Night, 
The title of the poem was no profane thought of his — it had ari- 
sen long before among the people themselves, and expressed the 
prevalent opinion respecting the use and wont that profaned the 
solemnization of the most awful of all religious rites. In many 
places, and in none more than in Mauchline, the administration 
of the Sacrament was hedged round about by the self-same prac- 
tices that mark the character and make the enjoyment of a Ru- 
ral Fair-day. Nobody doubts that in the midst of them all 
sat hundreds of pious people whose whole hearts and souls were 
in the divine service. Nobody doubts that even among those 
who took part in the open or hardly concealed indecencies which 
custom could never make harmless, though it made many insen- 
sible to their grossness, not a few were now and then visited with 
devout thoughts ; nay, that some, in spite of their improprieties, 
which fell off from them unawares, or were by an act of pious 
volition dismissed, were privileged to partake of the communion 
elements. Nobody supposes that the heart of such an assem- 
blage was to be judged from its outside- — that there was no com- 
posed depth beneath that restless surface. But everybody knows 
that there was fatal desecration of the spirit that should have 
reigned there, and that the thoughts of this world were para- 
mount at a time and place set apart, under sanctions and denun- 
ciations the most awful, to the remembrance of Him who pur- 
chased for us the kingdom of Heaven. 



94 THE GENIUS AND 



We believe, then, that Burns was not guilty in this poem of 
any intentional irreverence toward the public ordinances of re- 
ligion. It does not, in our opinion, afford any reason for sup- 
posing that he was among the number of those who regard such 
ordinances as of little or no avail, because they do not always 
exemplify the reverence which becomes men in the act of com- 
muning with their God. Such is the constitution of human na- 
ture that there are too many moments in the very article of these 
solemn occasions when the hearts of men are a prey to all their 
wonted cares and follies ; and this short- coming in the whole 
solemnity robs it to many a delicate and well-disposed, but not 
thoroughly instructed imagination, of all attraction. But there 
must be a worship by communities as well as by individuals ; 
for in the regards of Providence, communities appear to have a 
personality as well as individuals ; and how shall the worship 
of communities be conducted, but by forms and ceremonies, 
which as they occur at stated times, whatever be the present 
frame of men's minds, must be often gone through with cold- 
ness. If those persons would duly consider the necessity of such 
ordinances, and their use in the conservation of religion, they 
would hold them sacred, in spite of the levity and hypocrisy that 
too often accompany their observance, nor would they wonder 
to see among the worshippers an unsuspected attention to the 
things of this world. But there was far more than this in the 
desecration which called for " the Holy Fair " from Burns. A 
divine ordinance had through unhallowed custom been overlaid 
by abuses, if not to the extinction, assuredly to the suppression, 
in numerous communicants, of the religious spirit essential to 
its efficacy ; and in that fact we have to look for a defence of 
the audacity of his sarcasm ; we are to believe that the Poet 
felt strong in the possession of a reverence far greater than that 
which he beheld, and in the conviction that nothing which he 
treated with levity could be otherwise than displeasing in the 
eye of God. We are far from seeking to place him, on this 
occasion, by the side of those men who, " strong in hatred of 
idolatry," become religious reformers, and while purifying Faith, 
unsparingly shattered Forms, not without violence to the cherished 
emotions of many pious hearts. Yet their wit too was often 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 95 

aimed at faulty things standing in close connection with solemni- 
ties which wit cannot approach without danger. Could such 
scenes as those against which Burns directed the hattery of his 
ridicule be endured now ? Would they not be felt to be most 
profane ? And may we not attribute the change in some measure 
to the Comic Muse ? 

Burns did not need to have subjects for poetry pointed out and 
enumerated to him, latent or patent in Scottish Life, as was con- 
siderately done in a series of dullish verses by that excellent 
person, Mr. Telford, Civil Engineer. Why, it has been asked, 
did he not compose a Sacred Poem on the administration of the 
Sacrament of our Lord's Last Supper ? The answer is — how 
could he with such scenes before his eyes ? Was he to shut 
them, and to describe it as if such scenes were not ? Was he 
to introduce them, and give us a poem of a mixed kind, faithful 
to the truth ? From such profanation his genius was guarded 
by his sense of religion, which though defective was fervent, and 
not unaccompanied with awe. Observe in what he has written, 
how he keeps aloof from the Communion Table. Not for one 
moment does be in thought enter the doors of the House of God. 
There is a total separation between the outer scene and the 
inner sanctuary — the administration of the sacrament is removed 
out of all those desecrating circumstances, and left to the imagi- 
nation of the religious mind — by his silence. Would a great 
painter have dared to give us a picture of it 1 Harvey has 
painted, simply and sublimely, a " Hill Sacrament." But there 
all is solemn in the light of expiring day ; the peace that passeth 
all understanding reposes on the heads of all the communi- 
cants ; and in a spot sheltered from the persecutor by the soli- 
tude of sympathizing nature, the humble and the contrite, in a 
ritual hallowed by their pious forefathers, draw near at his 
bidding to their Redeemer. 

We must now return to Burns himself, but cannot allow him 
to leave Ellisland without dwelling for a little while longer on 
the happy life he led for three years and more on that pleasant 
farm. Now and then you hear him low-spirited in his letters, 
but generally cheerful ; and though his affairs were not very 
prosperous, there was comfort in his household. There was 



96 THE GENIUS AND 



peace and plenty • for Mrs. Burns was a good manager, and he 
was not a bad one ; and one way and another the family enjoyed 
an honest livelihood. The house had been decently furnished, 
the farm well stocked ; and they wanted nothing to satisfy their 
sober wishes. Three years after marriage, Burns, with his Jean 
at his side, writes to Mrs. Dunlap, " as fine a figure and face 
we can produce* as any rank of life whatever ; rustic, native 
grace; unaffected modesty, and unsullied purity; nature's 
mother-wit, and the rudiments of taste ; a simplicity of soul, 
unsuspicious of, because unacquainted with, the ways of a selfish, 
interested, disingenuous world : and the dearest charm of all 
the rest, a yielding sweetness of disposition, and a generous 
warmth of heart, grateful for love on our part, and ardently 
glowing with a more than equal return ; these, with a healthy 
frame, a sound, vigorous constitution, which your higher ranks 
can scarcely ever hope to enjoy, are the charms of lovely woman 
in my humble walk of life." Josiah Walker, however, writing 
many years after, expresses his belief that Burns did not love 
his wife. " A discerning reader will perceive," says he, "that 
the letters in which he announces his marriage are written in 
that state, when the mind is pained by reflecting on an unwel- 
come step ; and finds relief to itself in seeking arguments to 
justify the deed, and lessen its disadvantages in the opinion of 
others. But the greater the change which the taste of Burns 
had undergone, and the more his hopes of pleasure must in con- 
sequence have been diminished, from rendering Miss Armour 
his only female companion, the more credit does he deserve for 
that rectitude of resolution, which prompted him to fulfil what 
he considered as an engagement, and to act as a necessary duty 
prescribed. We may be at the same time permitted to lament 
the necessity which he had thus incurred. A marriage, from 
a sentiment of duty, may by circumstances be rendered indis- 
pensable ; but as it is undeniably a duty, not to be accomplished 
by any temporary exertion, however great, but calling for a re- 
newal of effort every year, every day, and every hour, it is 
putting the strength and constancy of our principles to the. most 
severe and hazardous trial. Had Burns completed his marriage, 
before perceiving the interest which he had the power of cre- 
ating in females, whose accomplishments of mind and manners 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 97 

Jean could never hope to equal ; or had his duty and his pride 
permitted his alliance with one of that superior class, many of 
his subsequent deviations from sobriety and happiness might 
probably have been prevented. It was no fault of Mrs. Burns, 
that she was unable, from her education, to furnish what had 
grown, since the period of their first acquaintance, one of the 
poet's most exquisite enjoyments ; and if a daily vacuity of 
interest at home exhausted his patience, and led him abroad in 
quest of exercise for the activity of his mind, those who can 
place themselves in a similar situation will not be inclined to 
judge too severely of his error." Mrs. Burns, you know, was 
alive when this philosophical stuff was published, and she lived 
for more than twenty years after it, as exemplary a widow as 
she had been a wife. Its gross indelicacy — say rather wanton 
insult to all the feelings of a woman, is abhorrent to all 
the feelings of a man and shows the monk. And we have 
quoted it now that you may see what vile liberties respect- 
able libellers were long wont to take with Burns and all that 
belonged to him- — because he was a Gauger. Who would 
have dared to write thus of the wife and widow of a — Gentleman 
— of one who was a Lady ? Not Josiah Walker. Yet it passed 
for years unreproved — the " Life " which contains it still circu- 
lates, and seems to be in some repute — and Josiah Walker on 
another occasion is cited to the rescue by George Thomson as a 
champion and vindicator of the truth. The insolent eulogist 
dared to say that Robert Burns in marrying Jean Armour, " re- 
paired seduction by the most precious sacrifice, short of life, 
which one human being can make to another ! " To her, in ex- 
press terms, he attributes her husband's misfortunes and mis- 
doings — to her who soothed his sorrows, forgave his sins, inspired 
his songs, cheered his hearth, blest his bed, educated his chil- 
dren, revered his memory, and held sacred his dust. 

What do you think was, according to his biographer, the chief 
cause of the blameable life Burns led at Ellisland ? He knew 
not what to do with himself! " When not occupied in the fields, 
his time must have hung heavy on his hands /" Just picture to 
yourself Burns peevishly pacing the " half-parlor half-kitchen " 
floor, with his hands in his breeches pockets, tormenting his dull 
8 



THE GENIUS AND 



brain to invent some employment by which he might be en- 
abled to resist the temptation of going to bed in the fore- 
noon in his clothes ! But how is this ? " When not occupied in 
the fields, his time must have hung heavy on his hands ; for we 
are not to infer, from the literary eminence of Burns, that, like 
a person regularly trained to studious habits, he could render 
himself by study independent of society. He could read and 
write when occasion prompted ; but he could not, like a profes- 
sional scholar, become so interested in a daily course of lettered 
industry, as to find company an interruption rather than a relief" 
We cheerfully admit that Burns was not engaged at Ellisland on 
a History of the World. He had not sufficient books. Besides, 
he had to ride, in good smuggling weather, two hundred miles 
a-week. But we cannot admit that " to banish dejection, and to 
fill his vacant hours, it is not surprising that he should have re- 
sorted to such associates as his new neighborhood, or the inns 
upon the road to Ayrshire, could afford ; and if these happened 
to be of a low description, that his constant ambition to render 
himself an important and interesting figure in every society, made 
him suit his conduct and conversation to their taste." When 
not on duty, the Exciseman was to be found at home like other 
farmers, and when " not occupied in the fields " with farm- work, 
he might be seen playing with Sir William Wallace and other 
Scottish heroes in miniature, two or three pet sheep of the qua- 
druped breed sharing in the vagaries of the bipeds ; or striding 
along the Scaur with his Whangee rod in his fist, with which, 
had time hung heavy on his hands, he would have cracked the 
skull of old Chronos ; or sitting on a divot-dyke with the ghost 
of Tarn O' Shanter, Captain Henderson, and the Earl of Glen- 
cairn ; or, so it is recorded, "on a rock projecting into the Nith 
(which we have looked for in vain) employed in angling, with a 
cap made of a fox's skin on his head, a loose great-coat fixed 
round him by a belt, from which depended an enormous High- 
land broadsword ;" or with his legs under the fir, with the fa- 
mous Black Bowl sending up a Scotch mist in which were visi- 
ble the wigs of two orthodox English clergymen, "to whose 
tastes his constant ambition to render himself an important and 
interesting figure in every society, made him suit his conducj 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 90 

and conversation ;" — in such situations might Josiah Walker 
have stumbled upon Burns, and perhaps met with his own friend, 
" a clergyman from the south of England, who, on his return, 
talked with rapture of his reception, and of all that he had seen 
and heard in the cottage of Ellisland," or with Ramsay of 
Oughtertyre, who was delighted "with Burns's uxor Sabina qualis 
and the poet's modest mansion, so unlike the habitations of ordi- 
nary rustics/' the very evening the Bard suddenly bounced in 
upon us, and said as he entered, " 1 come, to use the words of 
Shakspeare, ' stewed in haste? " and in a little while, such was the 
force and versatility of his genius, he made the tears run down 

Mr. L- -'s cheeks, albeit " unused to the poetic strain ;"— or 

who knows but the pedestrian might have found the poet engaged 
in religious exercises under the sylvan shade ? For did he not 
write to Mrs. Dunlop, " I own myself so little of a presbyterlan, 
that I approve of set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts 
of devotion, for breaking in on that habitual routine of life and 
thought which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of in- 
stinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very 
little superior to mere machinery. This day (New- Year-day 
morning), the first Sunday of May, a breezy blue-skyed noon, 
some time before the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm 
sunny day about the end of autumn ; these, time out of mind, 
have been with me a kind of holiday." Finally, Josiah might 
have made his salaam to the Exciseman just as he was folding 
up that letter in which he says, " we know nothing, or next to 
nothing, of the substance or structure of our souls, so cannot ac- 
count for those seeming caprices or whims, that one should be 
particularly pleased with this thing or struck with that, which, in 
minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I 
have some favorite flowers in spring, among which are the moun- 
tain daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the 
budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang 
over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary 
whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing ca- 
dence of a troop of grey plovers, in an autumnal morning, with- 
out feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion 
or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can all this be 



300 THE GENIUS AND 

owing ? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the iEolian 
harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident ? Or 
do these workings argue something within us above the trodden 
clod ? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and 
important realities — a God that made all things — man's immate- 
rial and immortal nature — and a world of weal or wo beyond 
doath and the grave." 

Burns however found that an active gauger, with ten parishes 
to look after, could not be a successful farmer ; and looking 
forward to promotion in the Excise, he gave up his lease, and 
on his appointment to another district removed into Dumfries. 
The greater part of his small capital had been sunk or scattered 
on the somewhat stony soil of Ellisland ; but with his library 
and furniture — his wife and his children — his and their wearing 
apparel — a trifle in ready money — no debt — youth, health, and 
hope, and a salary of seventy pounds, he did not think himself 
poor. Such provision, he said, was luxury to what either he or 
his better-half had been born to — and the flitting from Ellisland, 
accompanied as it was with the regrets and respect of the neigh- 
borhood, displayed on the whole a cheerful cavalcade. 

It is remarked by "Mr. Lockhart that Burns's " four principal 
biographers, Heron, Currie, Walker and Irving, concur in the 
general statement that his moral course, from the time that he 
settled in Dumfries, was downwards." Mr. Lockhart has shown 
that they have one and all committed many serious errors in this 
" general statement,*' and we too shall examine it before we 
conclude. Meanwhile let us direct our attention, not to his 
" moral course," but to the course of his genius. It continued 
to burn bright as ever, and if the character of the man corres- 
ponded in its main features with that of the poet, which we be- 
lieve it did, its best vindication will be found in a right under- 
standing of the spirit that animated his genius to the last, and 
gave birth to perhaps its finest effusions — his matchless songs. 

In his earliest Journal, we find this beautiful passage : — 

" There is a noble sublimity, a heart-melting tenderness, in 
some of our ancient ballads, which show them to be the work of 
a masterly hand : and it has often given me many a heart-ache 
to reflect, that such glorious old bards — bards who very proba- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 101 

bly owed all their talents to 'native genius, yet have described 
the exploits of heroes, the pangs of disappointment, and the melt- 
ings of love, with such fine strokes of nature — that their very 
names (O how mortifying to a bard's vanity !) are now 6 buried 
among the wreck of things which were.' O ye illustrious 
names unknown ! who could feel so strongly and describe so 
well ; the last, the meanest of the Muse's train — one who, though 
far inferior to your flights, yet eyes your path, and with trem- 
bling wing would sometimes soar after you — a poor rustic bard, 
unknown, pays this sympathetic pang to your memory ! Some 
of you tell us, with all the charms of verse, that you have been 
unfortunate in the world — unfortunate in love ; he too has felt 
the loss of his little fortune, the loss of friends, and, worse than 
all, the loss of the woman he adored. Like you, all his conso- 
lation was his muse. She taught him in rustic measures to 
complain. Happy could he have done it with your strength of 
imagination and flow of verse ! May the turf lie lightly on 
your bones ! and may you now enjoy that solace and rest which 
this world rarely gives to the heart tuned to all the feelings of 
poesy and love." 

The old nameless song-writers, buried centuries ago in the 
kirk-yards th^t have themselves perhaps ceased to exist — yet 
one sees sometimes lonesome burial-places among the hills, 
where man's dust continues to be deposited after the house of 
God has been removed elsewhere — the old nameless song-writers 
took hold out of their stored hearts of some single thought or 
remembrance surpassingly sweet at the moment over all others, 
and instantly words as sweet had being, and breathed them- 
selves forth along with some accordant melody of the still more 
olden time ; — or when musical and poetical genius happily met 
together, both alike passion-inspired, then was born another new 
tune or air soon treasured within a thousand maidens' hearts, 
and soon flowing from lips that "murmured near the living 
brooks a music sweeter than their own." Had boy or virgin 
faded away in untimely death, and the green mound that covered 
them, by the working of some secret power far within the heart, 
suddenly risen to fancy's eye, and then as suddenly sunk away 
into oblivion with all the wavering burial-place ? Then was 



102 THE GENIUS AND 



framed dirge, hymn, elegy, that long after the mourned and the 
mourner were forgotten, continued to wail and lament up and 
down all the vales of Scotland — for what vale is unvisited by 
sorrow — in one same monotonous melancholy air, varied only 
as each separate singer had her heart touched, and ker face 
saddened, with a fainter or stronger shade of pity or grief! 
Had some great battle been lost and won, and to the shepherd 
on the braes had a faint and far-off sound seemed on a sudden 
to touch the horizon like the echo of a trumpet ? Then had 
some ballad its birth, heroic yet with dying falls, for the singer 
wept, even as his heart burned within him, over the princely 
head prostrated with all its plumes, haply near the lowly woods- 
man, whose horn had often startled the deer as together they 
trode the forest-chase, lying humble in death by his young lord's 
feet ! — O, blue-eyed maiden, even more beloved than beautiful \ 
how couldst thou ever find heart to desert thy minstrel, who for 
thy sake would have died without one sigh given to the disap- 
pearing happiness of sky and earth — and, witched by some evil 
spell, how couldst thou follow an outlaw to foreign lands, to 
find, alas ! some day a burial in the great deep ? Thus was 
enchained in sounds the complaint of disappointed, defrauded, 
and despairing passion, and another air filled the eyes of our 
Scottish maidens with a new luxury of tears — a low flat tune, 
surcharged throughout with one groan-like sigh, and acknow- 
ledged, even by the gayest heart, to be indeed the language of 
an incurable grief ! — Or flashed the lover's raptured hour across 
the brain — yet an hour, in all its rapture, calm as the summer 
sea — or the level summit of a far flushing forest asleep in sun- 
shine, when there is not a breath in heaven ? Then thoughts 
that breathe, and words that burn — and, in that wedded verse 
and music you feel that " love is heaven, and heaven is love P* 
But affection, sober, sedate, and solemn, has its sudden and 
strong inspirations : sudden and strong as those of the wildest 
and most fiery passion. Hence the old grey-haired poet and 
musician, sitting haply blind in shade or sunshine, and bethink- 
ing him of the days of his youth, while the leading hand of his 
aged Alice gently touches his arm, and that voice of hers that 
once linted like the linnet, is now like that of the dove in its 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 103 

lonely tree, mourns not for the past, but gladdens in the present, 
and sings a holy song — like one of the songs of Zion — for both 
trust that, ere the sun brings another summer, their feet will be 
wandering by the waters of eternal life. 

Thus haply might arise verse and air of Scotland's old pathe- 
tic melodies. And how her light and airy measures ? 

Streaks of sunshine come dancing down from heaven on the 
darkest days to bless and beautify the life of poverty dwelling 
in the wilderness. Labor, as he goes forth at morn from his 
rustic lodge, feels, to the small bird's twitter, his whole being 
filled with joy ; and, as he quickens his pace to field or wood, 
breaks into a song. Care is not always his black companion, 
but oft, at evening hour — while innocence lingers half-afraid be- 
hind, yet still follows with thoughtful footsteps — Mirth leads him 
to the circular seat beneath the tree, among whose exterior 
branches swings, creaking to and fro in the wind, the signboard 
teaching friendship by the close grasp of two emblematical 
hands. And thence the catch and troll, while " laughter hold- 
ing both his sides " sheds tears to song and ballad pathetic on 
the woes of married life, and all the ills that " our flesh is heir 
to." — Fair, Rocking, and Harvest-home, and a hundred rural 
festivals, are for ever giving wings to the flight of the circling 
year ; or how could this lazy earth ever in so short a time whirl, 
spinning asleep on her axis, round that most attractive but dis- 
tant sun ? How loud, broad, deep, soul-and-body-shaking is the 
ploughman's or the shepherd's mirth, as a hundred bold sun- 
burnt visages make the rafters of the old hostel ring ! Overhead 
the thunder of the time-keeping dance, and all the joyous tene- 
ment alive with love ! The pathetic song, by genius steeped in 
tears, is forgotten ; roars of boorish laughter reward the fearless 
singer for the ballad that brings burning blushes on every female 
face, till the snooded head can scarcely be lifted up again to 
meet the free kiss of affection bold in the privileges of the festi- 
val, where bashfulness is out of season, and the chariest maid 
withholds not the harmless boon only half granted beneath the 
milk-white thorn. It seems as if all the profounder interests of 
life were destroyed, or had never existed. In moods like these, 
genius plays with grief, and sports with sorrow. Broad farce 



104 THE GENIUS AND 



shakes hands with deep tragedy. Vice seems almost to be vir- 
tue's sister. The names and the natures of things are changed, 
and all that is most holy, and most holily cherished by us strange 
mortal creatures — for which thousands of men and women have 
died at the stake, and would die again rather than forfeit it — 
virgin love, and nuptial faith, and religion itself that saves us 
from being but as the beasts that perish, and equalizes us with 
the angels that live for ever — all become for a time seeming ob- 
jects of scoff, derision, and merriment. But it is not so, as God 
is in heaven it is not so ; there has been a flutter of strange 
dancing lights on life's surface, but that is all, its depths have 
remained undisturbed in the poor man's nature ; and how deep 
these are you may easily know by looking, in an hour or two, 
through that small shining pane, the only one in the hut, and be- 
holding and hearing him, his wife and children, on their knees 
in prayer — (how beautiful in devotion that same maiden now !) 
not unseen by the eye of Him who, sitting in the heaven of hea- 
vens, doth make our earth his footstool. 

And thus the maay broad-mirth songs, and tales, and ballads 
arose, that enliven Scotland's antique minstrelsy. 

To Burns's ear all these lowly lays were familiar, and most 
dear were they all to his heart : nor less so the airs in which 
they have as it were been so long embalmed, and will be imper- 
ishable, unless some fatal change should ever be wrought in the 
manners of our people. From the first hour, and indeed long 
before it, that he composed his rudest verse, often had he sung 
aloud "old songs that are the music of the heart;" and some 
day or other to be able himself to breathe such strains, had been 
his dearest, his highest ambition. His "genius and his moral 
frame" were thus imbued with the spirit of our old traditionary 
ballad poetry ; and as soon as all his manifold passions were 
ripe, and his whole glorious being in full maturity, the voice of 
song was on all occasions of deepest and tenderest human inter- 
est, the voice of his daily, his nightly speech. He wooed each 
maiden in song that will, as long as our Doric dialect is breathed 
by love in beauty's ears, be murmured close to the cheek of In- 
nocence trembling in the arms of Passion. It was in some such 
dream of delight that, wandering all by himself to seek the 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 105 

muse by some " trotting burn's meander/' he found his face 
breathed upon by the wind, as it was turned toward the region 
of the setting sun ; and in a moment it was as the pure breath 
of his beloved, and he exclaimed to the conscious stars, 

" Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, 

I dearly like the west ; 
For there the bonny lassie lives, 

The lass that I lo'e best I" 

How different, yet how congenial to that other strain, which 
ends like the last sound of a funeral bell, when the aged have 
been buried : 

" We'll sleep thegither at the foot, 
John Anderson, my joe !" 

These old songs were his models, because they were models of 
certain forms of feeling having a necessary and eternal exist- 
ence. Feel as those who breathed them felt, and if you utter 
your feelings, the utterance is song. Burns did feel as they 
felt, and looked with the same eyes on the same objects. So 
entirely was their language his language, that all the beautiful 
lines, and half lines, and single words, that, because of something 
in them more exquisitely true to nature, had survived all the rest 
of the compositions to which they had long ago belonged, were 
sometimes adopted by him, almost unconsciously it might seem, 
in his finest inspirations ; and oftener still sounded in his ear 
like a key-note, on which he pitched his own plaintive tune of 
the heart, till the voice and language of the old and new days 
were but as one • and the maiden who sung to herself the song 
by her wheel, or on the brae, quite lost in a wavering world of 
phantasy, could not, as she smiled, choose but also weep ! 

So far from detracting from the originality of his lyrics, this 
impulse to composition greatly increased it, while it gave to them 
a more touching character than perhaps ever could have be- 
longed to them, had they not breathed at all of antiquity. Old 
but not obsolete, a word familiar to the lips of human beings who 
lived ages ago, but tinged with a slight shade of strangeness as 



THE GENIUS AND 



it flows from our own, connects the speaker, or the singer, in a 
way, though " mournful, yet pleasant to the soul/' with past 
generations, and awakens a love at once more tender and more 
imaginative towards " auld Scotland." We think, even at 
times when thus excited, of other Burnses who died without their 
fame ; and, glorying in him and his name, we love his poetry 
the more deeply for the sake of him whose genius has given our 
native land a new title of honor among the nations. Assuredly 
Burns is felt to be a Scotchman intus etin cute in all his poetry ; 
but not more even in his " Tarn o'Shanter " and " Cottar's Satur- 
day night," his two longest and most elaborate compositions, 
than in one and all of his innumerable and inimitable songs, from 
" Daintie Davie," to " Thou lingering star." We know too 
that the composition of songs was to him a perfect happiness 
that continued to the close of life — an inspiration that shot its 
light and heat, it may be said, within the very borders of his 
grave. 

In his " Common-place or Scrap Book, begun in April, 1783," 
there are many fine reflections on Song-writing, besides that ex- 
quisite invocation — showing how early Burns had studied it as 
an art. We have often heard some of his popular songs found 
fault with for their imperfect rhymes — so imperfect, indeed, as 
not to be called rhymes at all ; and we acknowledge that we 
remember the time when we used reluctantly to yield a dis- 
satified assent to such objections. Thus in " Highland Mary " 
— an impassioned strain of eight quatrains — strictly speaking 
there are no rhymes — Montgomery, drumlie ; tarry, Mary ; 
blossom, bosom ; dearie, Mary ; tender, asunder ; early, Mary ; 
fondly, kindly ; dearly, Mary. It is not enough to say that here, 
and in other instances, Burns was imitating the manner of some 
of the old songs — indulging in the same license ; for he would 
not have done so, had he thought it an imperfection. He felt 
that there must be a reason in nature why this was sometimes so 
pleasing— -why it sometimes gave a grace beyond the reach of 
art. Those minnesingers had all musical ears, and were right 
in believing them. Their ears told them that such words as 
these — meeting on their tympana under the modifying influence 
of tune, were virtually rhymes ; and as such they " slid into 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 107 

their souls." " There is," says Burns in a passage unaccounta- 
bly omitted by Currie, and first given by Cromek — " a great 
irregularity in the old Scccch songs — a redundancy of syllables 
with respect to that exactness of accent and measure that the 
English poetry requires — but which glides in most melodiously 
with e respective tunes to which they are set. For instance, 
the fine old song of The mill, mill O — to give it a plain prosaic 
reading — it halts prodigiously out of measure. On the other 
hand, the song set to the same tune in Bremner's Collection of 
Scotch songs, which begins, To Fanny fair could I impart, c^c— 
it is most exact measure ; and yet, let them both be sung before 
a real critic, one above the biases of prejudice, but a thorough 
judge of nature, how flat and spiritless will the last appear, how trite 
and lamely methodical, compared with the wild, warbling cadence 
— the heart-moving melody of the first. This is particularly the 
case with all those airs which end with a hypermetrical syllable. 
There is a degree of wild irregularity in many of the composi- 
tions and fragments which are daily sung to them by my com- 
peers — the common people — a certain happy arrangement of old 
Scotch syllables, and yet very frequently nothing — not even like 
rhyme— or sameness of jingle, at the end of the lines. This has 
made me sometimes imagine that perhaps it might be possible for 
a Scotch poet, with a nice judicious ear, to set compositions to 
many of our most favorite airs — particularly the class of them 
mentioned above — independent of rhyme altogether." 

It is a common mistake to suppose that the world is indebted 
for most of Burns's songs to George Thomson. He contributed 
to that gentleman sixty original songs, and a noble contribution it 
was; besides hints, suggestions, emendations, and restorations 
innumerable ; but three times as many were written by him, 
emended or restored, for Johnson's Scots' Musical Museum. 
He began to send songs to Johnson, with whom he had become 
intimately acquainted on his first visit to Edinburgh, early in 
1787, and continued to send them till within a few days of his 
death. In November, 1788, he says to Johnson, "I can easily 
see, my dear friend, that you will probably have four volumes. 
Perhaps you may not find your account lucratively in this busi- 
ness \ but you are a patriot for the music of your country, and I 



108 THE GENIUS AND 

am certain posterity will look on themselves as highly indebted 
to your public spirit. Be not in a hurry ; let us go on correctly, 
and your name will be immortal." On the 4th of July, 1796— 
he died on the 21st — he writes from Dumfries to the worthy 
music-seller in Edinburgh : " How are you, my dear friend, and 
how comes on your fifth volume ? You may probably think that 
for some time past I have neglected you and your work ; but, 
alas ! the hand of pain, sorrow, and care, has these many 
months lain heavy on me. Personal and domestic affliction have 
almost entirely banished that alacrity and life with which I used 
to woo the rural muse of Scotia. You are a good, worthy, honest 
fellow, and have a good right to live in this world — because you 
deserve it. Many a merry meeting the publication has given 
us, and possibly it may give us more, though, alas ! I fear it. 
This protracting, slow, consuming illness which hangs over me, 
will, I doubt much, my ever dear friend, arrest my sun before 
he has well reached his middle career, and will turn over the 
poet to far more important concerns than studying the brilliancy of 
wit, or the pathos of sentiment. However, hope is the cordial of the 
human heart, and I endeavor to cherish it as well as I can. Let 
me hear from you as soon as convenient. Your work is a great 
one, and now that it is finished, I see, if I were to begin again, 
two or three things that might be mended ; yet I will venture to 
prophesy, that to future ages your publication will be the text- 
book and standard of Scottish song and music. I am ashamed 
to ask another favor of you^l)ecause you have been so very good 
already ; but my wife has a very particular friend of hers — a 
young lady who sings well — to whom she wishes to present the 
Scots' Musical Museum. If you have a spare copy, will you be 
so obliging as to send it by the first Fly, as I am anxious to have 
it soon." 

Turn from James Johnson and his Scots 7 Musical Museum 
for a moment to George Thomson and his Collection. In Sep- 
tember, 1792, Mr. Thomson — who never personally knew Burns 
— tells him " for some years past I have, with a friend or two, 
employed many leisure hours in selecting and collating the most 
favorite of our national melodies for publication ; " and says — 
" We will esteem your poetical assistance a particular favor ; 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 109 

besides paying any reasonable price you shall please to demand 
for it." Burns, spurning the thought of being " paid any rea- 
sonable price," closes at once with the proposal, " as the request 
you make to me will positively add to my enjoyments in comply- 
ing with it, I shall enter into your undertaking with all the 
small portion of abilities I have — strained to the, utmost exertion 
by the impulse of enthusiasm." That enthusiasm for more than 
three years seldom languished — it was in his heart when his 
hand could hardly obey its bidding ; and on the 12th of July, 
1796 — eight days after he had written, in the terms you have 
just seen, to James Johnson for a copy of his Scots 7 Musical 
Museum — he writes thus to George Thomson for five pounds. 
" After all my boasted independence, stern necessity compels 
me to implore you for five pounds. A cruel of a haber- 
dasher, to whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I 
am dying, has commenced a process, and will infallibly put me 
into jail. Do for God's sake send me that sum, and that by re- 
turn of post. Forgive me this earnestness ; but the horrors of 
a jail have made me half distracted. I do not ask all this gra- 
tuitously ; for upon returning health, I hereby promise and en- 
gage to furnish you with Jive pounds worth of the neatest song 
genius you have seen. Forgive me, forgive me !" 

Mr. Johnson, no doubt, sent a copy of the Museum ; but we 
do not know if the Fly arrived before the Bier. Mr. Thomson 
was prompt : and Dr. Currie, speaking of Burns's refusal to 
become a weekly contributor to the Poet's Corner in the Morn- 
ing Chronicle, at a guinea a week, says, " Yet, he had for seve- 
ral years furnished, and was at that time furnishing, the Mu- 
seum of Johnson, with his beautiful lyrics, without fee or re- 
ward, and was obstinately refusing all recompense for his as- 
sistance to the greater work of Mr. Thomson, which the justice 
and generosity of that gentleman was pressing upon him." 
That obstinacy gave way at last, not under the pressure of Mr. 
Thomson's generosity and justice, but under " the sense of his 
poverty, and of the approaching distress of his infant family 
which pressed," says Dr. Currie truly, " on Burns as he lay on 
the bed of death." 

But we are anticipating ; and desire at present to see Burns 



110 THE GENIUS AND 



" in glory and in joy." " Whenever I want to be more than 
ordinary in song ; to be in some degree equal to your diviner 
airs, do you imagine I fast and pray for the celestial emanation ? 
I have a glorious recipe ; the very one that for his own use was 
invented by the divinity of healing and poetry, when erst he piped 
to the flocks of Admetus. I put myself on a regimen of admir- 
ing a fine woman ; and in proportion to the admirability of her 
charms, in proportion you are delighted with my verses. The 
lightning of her eye is the godhead of Parnassus ; and the 
witchery of her smile, the divinity of Helicon." We know the 
weak side of his character — the sin that most easily beset him — 
that did indeed " stain his name" — and made him for many sea- 
sons the prey of remorse. But though it is not allowed to genius 
to redeem — though it is falsely said, that " the light that leads 
astray is light from heaven" — and though Burns's transgres- 
sions must be judged as those of common men, and visited with 
the same moral reprobation — yet surely we may dismiss them 
with a sigh from our knowledge, for a while, as we feel the charm 
of the exquisite poetry originating in the inspiration of passion, 
purified by genius, and congenial with the utmost innocency of 
the virgin breast. 

In his Love-Songs, all that is best in his own being delights to 
bring itself into communion with all that is best in theirs whom 
he visions walking before him in beauty. That beauty is 
made " still more beauteous" in the light of his genius, and the 
passion it then moves partakes of the same etherial color. If 
love inspired his poetry, poetry inspired his love, and not only in- 
spired but elevated the whole nature of it. If the highest de- 
lights of his genius were in the conception and celebration of 
female loveliness, that trained sensibility was sure to produce 
extraordinary devotion to the ideal of that loveliness of which 
innocence is the very soul. If music refine the manners, how 
much more will it have that effect on him who studies its spirit, 
as Burns did that of the Scottish songs, in order to marry them 
to verse ? " Until I am complete master of a tune in my own 
singing, such as it is, I can never compose for it. My way is 
this : I consider the poetic sentiment correspondent to my idea 
of the musical expression — then choose my theme — compose 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. Ill 

one stanza. When that is composed, which is generally the 
most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down now and 
then, look out for objects in nature round me that are in unison 
or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of 
my bosom, humming every now and then the air, with the verses 
I have framed. When I feel my muse beginning to jade, I re- 
tire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my 
effusions to paper ; swinging at intervals on the hind legs of my 
elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, 
as my pen goes. Seriously, this, at home, is almost invariably 
my way." Then we know that his Bonnie Jean was generally 
in his presence, engaged in house affairs, while he was thus on 
his inspiring swing, that she was among the first to hear each 
new song recited by her husband, and the first to sing it to him, 
that he might know if it had been produced to live. He has 
said, that " musically speaking, conjugal love is an instrument 
of which the gamut is scanty and confined, but the tones in- 
expressibly sweet" — that Love, not so confined, "has powers 
equal to all the intellectual modulations of the human soul." 
But did not those " tones inexpressibly sweet" often mingle them- 
selves unawares to the Poet with those " intellectual modula- 
tions ?" And had he not once loved Jean Armour to distraction? 
His first experiences of the passion of love, in its utmost sweet- 
ness and bitterness, had been for her sake, and the memories of 
those years came often of themselves unbidden into the very 
heart of his songs when his fancy was for the hear enamored of 
other beauties. 

With a versatility, not compatible perhaps with a capacity of 
profoundest emotion, but in his case with extreme tenderness, 
he could instantly assume, and often on the slightest apparent 
impulse, some imagined character as completely as if it were 
his own, and realize its conditions. Or he could imagine him- 
self out of all the circumstances by which his individual life 
was environed, and to all the emotions arising from that trans- 
migration, give utterance as lively as the language inspired by 
his communion with his own familiar world. Even when he 
knew he was dying, he looked in Jessie Lewars 5 face, whom 
he loved as a father loves his daughter, and that he might re- 



112 THE GENIUS AND 

ward her filial tenderness for him who was fast wearing away, 
by an immortal song, in his affection for her he feigned a hope- 
less passion, and imagined himself the victim of despair • — 

" Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, 

And soft as their parting tear — Jessy ! 
Although thou maun never be mine, 

Although even hope is denied ; 
'Tis sweeter for thee despairing, 

Than aught in this world beside !" 

It was said by one who during a long life kept saying weighty 
things — old Hobbes — that " in great differences of persons, the 
greater have often fallen in love with the meaner : but not con- 
trary. 55 What Gilbert tells us of his brother might seem to 
corroborate that dictum — " His love rarely settled on persons 
who were higher than himself, or who had more consequence in 
life.' 5 This, however, could only apply to the early part of his 
life. Then he had few opportunities of fixing his affections on 
persons above him; and if he .had had, their first risings would 
have been suppressed by his pride. But his after destination so 
far levelled the inequality that it was not unnatural to address 
his devotion to ladies of high degree. He then felt that he could 
command their benevolence, if not inspire their love ; and elated 
by that consciousness, he feared not to use towards them the 
language of love, of unbounded passion. He believed, and he 
was not deceived in the belief, that he could exalt them in their 
own esteem, by hanging round their proud necks the ornaments 
of his genius. Therefore, sometimes, he seemed to turn himself 
away disdainfully from sunburnt bosoms in homespun covering, 
to pay his vows and adorations to the Queens of Beauty. The 
devoirs of a poet, whose genius was at their service, have been 
acceptable to many a high-born dame and damsel, as the sub- 
mission of a conqueror. Innate superiority made him, in these 
hours, absolutely unable to comprehend the spirit of society as 
produced by artificial distinctions, and at all times unwilling to 
submit to it or pay it homage. " Perfection whispered passing 
by, Behold the Lass o' Ballochmyle f" and Burns, too proud to 
change himself into a lord or squire, imagined what happiness 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 113 

might have been his if all those charms had budded and blown 
within a cottage like " a rose-tree in full bearing. " 

" 0, had she been a country maid, 

And I the happy country swain, 
Tho' sheltered in the lowest shed 

That ever rose on Scotland's plain ! 
Thro' weary winter's wind and rain, 

With joy, with rapture, I would toil ; 
And nightly to my bosom strain 

The bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle." 

He speaks less passionately of the charms of " bonnie Lesley 
as she gaed owre the border," for they had not taken him by 
surprise ; he was prepared to behold a queen, and with his own 
hands he placed upon her head the crown. 

" To see her is to love her, 

And love but her for ever ; 
For Nature made her what she is, 
And never made anither. 

" Thou art a queen, fair Lesley, 

Thy subjects we, before thee : 
Thou art divine, fair Lesley, 

The hearts o' men adore thee." 

Nay, evil spirits look in her face and almost become good — 
while angels love her for her likeness to themselves, and happy 
she must be on earth in the eye of heaven. We know not much 
about the " Lovely Davis ;" but in his stanzas she is the very 
Sovereign of Nature. 

" Each eye it cheers, when she appears, 

Like Phoebus in the morning, 
When past the shower, and every flower, 

The garden is adorning. 
As the wretch looks o'er Siberia's shore, 

When winter-bound the wave is ; 
Sae droops our heart when we must part 

Frae charming, lovely Davis. 



9 



114 THE GENIUS AND 



" Her smile's a gift frae boon the lift 

That makes us mair than princes, 
A scepter'd hand, a king's command, 

Is in her parting glances. 
The man in arms 'gainst female charms, 

Even he her willing slave is ; 
He hugs his chain, and owns the reign 

Of conquering, lovely Davis." 

The loveliest of one of the loveliest families in Scotland he 
changed into a lowly lassie, aye " working her mammie's work," 
and her lover into Young Robie — " who gaed wi ' Jeanie to the 
tryste, and danced wi ' Jeanie on the down." In imagination 
he is still himself the happy man — his loves are short and rap- 
turous as his lyrics — and while his constancy may be complained 
of, it is impossible to help admiring the richness of his genius 
that keeps for ever bringing fresh tribute to her whom he hap- 
pens to adore. 

" Her voice is the voice of the morning, 

That wakes through the green-spreading grove 
When Phoebus peeps over the mountains, 
On music, and pleasure, and love." 

That was the voice of one altogether lovely — a lady elegant and 
accomplished — and adorning a higher condition than his own ; 
but though finer lines were never written, they are not finer 
than these four inspired by the passing by of a young woman, 
on the High Street of Dumfries, with her shoes and stockings in 
her hand, and her petticoats frugally yet liberally kilted to her 
knee. 

" Her yellow hair, beyond compare, 

Comes trinkling down her swan- white neck. 
And her two eyes, like stars in skies, 
Would keep a sinking ship frae wreck." 

It may be thought that such poetry is too high for the people 
— the common people — "beyond the reaches of their souls ;" 
but Burns knew better — and he knew that he who would be 
their poet must put forth all his powers. There is not a single 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 115 

thought, feeling, or image in all he ever wrote, that has not been 
comprehended in its full force by thousands and tens of thousands 
in the very humblest condition. They could not of themselves 
have conceived them — nor given utterance to anything resem- 
bling them to our ears. How dull of apprehension ! how unlike 
gods ! But let them be spoken to, and they hear. Their hearts 
delighted with a strange sweet music which by recognition they 
understand, are not satisfied with listening, but yearn to respond ; 
and the whole land that for many years had seemed, but was not, 
silent, in a few months is overflowing with songs that had issued 
from highest genius it is true, but from the same source that is 
daily welling out its waters in every human breast. The songs 
that establish themselves among a people must indeed be simple 
—but the simplest feelings are the deepest, and once that they 
have received adequate expression, then they die not — but live 
for ever. 

Many of his Love-songs are, as they ought to be, untinged 
with earthly desire, and some of these are about the most beau- 
tiful of any — as 

"■Wilt thou be my dearie ? 

When sorrow wrings thy gentle heart, 
Wilt thou let me cheer thee ! 

By the treasure of my soul, 
That's the love I bear thee ! 

I swear and vow, that only thou 
Shalt ever be my dearie. 

" Lassie, say thou lo'es me ; 

Or if thou wilt na be my ain, 
Say na thou'lt refuse me : 

Let me, lassie, quickly die. 
Trusting that thou lo'es me. 

Lassie, let me quickly die, 

Trusting that thou lo'es me." 

Nothing can be more exquisitely tender — passionless from the 
excess of passion — pure from very despair — love yet hopes for 
love's confession, though it feels it can be but a word of pity to 
sweeten death. 

In the most exquisite of his Songs, he connects and blends the 



116 THE GENIUS AND 



tenderest and most passionate emotions with all appearances- 
animate and inanimate ; in them all — and in some by a single 
touch — we are made to feel that we are in the midst of nature. 
A bird glints by, and we know we are in the woods — a primrose 
grows up, and we are among the braes — the mere name of a 
stream brings its banks before us— or two or three words leave 
us our own choice of many waters. 

" Far dearer to me the lone glen of green bracken, 
Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom." 

It has been thought that the eyes of " the laboring poor " are 
not very sensible — nay, that they are insensible to scenery — and 
that the pleasures thence derived are confined to persons of cul- 
tivated taste. True, that the country girl, as she " lifts her 
leglin, and hies her away," is thinking more of her lover's face 
and figure — whom she hopes to meet in the evening — than of 
the trysting tree, or of the holm where the grey hawthorn has 
been standing for hundreds of years. Yet she knows right well 
that they are beautiful ; and she feels their beauty in the old 
song she is singing to herself, that at dead of winter recalls the 
spring time and all the loveliness of the season of leaves. The 
people know little about painting — how should they ? for unac- 
quainted with the laws of perspective, they cannot see the land- 
scape-picture on which instructed eyes gaze till the imagination 
beholds a paradise. But the landscapes themselves they do see 
— and they love to look on them. The ploughman does so, as 
he "homeward plods his weary way ;" the reaper as he looks 
at what Burns calls his own light — " the reaper's nightly beam, 
mild chequering through the trees." If it were not so, why 
-should they call it " Bonnie Scotland " — why should they call 
him " Sweet Robbie Burns ? " 

In his Songs they think of the flowers as alive, and with 
hearts : " How blest the flowers that round thee bloom !" In 
his Songs, the birds they hear singing in common hours with 
common pleasure, or give them not a thought, without losing their 
own nature partake of theirs, and shun, share, or mock human 
passion. He is at once the most accurate and the most poetical 



CHARACTER OF BURNS 117 

of ornithologists. By a felicitous epithet he characterizes each 
tribe according to song, plumage, habits, or haunts ; often intro- 
duces them for the sake of their own happy selves ; oftener as 
responsive to ours, in the expression of their own joys and griefs. 

" Oh, stay, sweet warbling wood-lark, stay, 
Nor quit for me the trembling spray; 
A hapless lover courts thy lay— 
Thy soothing, fond complaining. 

" Again, again, that tender part, 
That I may catch thy melting art ; 
For surely that wad touch her heart, 
Wha kills me wi' disdaining. 

" Say, was thy little mate unkind, 
And heard thee as the careless wind ? 
Oh, nocht but love and sorrow join'd, 
Sic notes o' love could wauken. 

" Thou tells o 5 never ending care : 
0' speechless grief, and dark despair ; 
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair. 
Or my poor heart is broken !" 

Who was Jenny Cruikshank ? Only child " of my worthy 
friend, Mr. William Cruikshank of the High School, Edin- 
burgh." Where did she live ? On a floor at the top of a com- 
mon stair, now marked No. 30, in James' Square. Burns lived 
for some time with her father — his room being one which has a 
window looking out from the gable of the house upon the green 
behind the Register Office. There was little on that green to 
look at — perhaps "a washing" laid out to dry. But the poet 
saw a vision — and many a maiden now often sees it too — whose 
face may be of the coarsest, and her hair not of the finest — but 
who in spite of all that, strange to say, has an imagination and 
a heart. 

" A rose-bud by my early walk 
Adown a corn-enclosed bawk, 
Sae gently bent its thorny stalk 

All on a dewy morning ; 



118 THE GENIUS AND 

Ere twice the shades o' dawn are fled, 
In a' its crimson glory spread ; 
An i drooping rich the dewy head, 

It scents the early morning. 

" Within the bush, her covert nest 
A little linnet fondly prest ; 
The dew sat chilly on her breast 

Sae early in the morning. 
The morn shall see her tender brood 
The pride, the pleasure o' the Wood, 
Amang the fresh green leaves bedew'd, 

Awake the early morning. 

" So thou, dear bird, young Jeany fair ! 
On trembling string, or vocal air, 
Shall sweetly pay the tender care, 

That tends thy early morning. 
So thou, sweet rosebud, young and gay, 
Shalt beauteous blaze upon the day, 
And bless the parent's evening ray, 

That watch'd thy early morning." 

Indeed, in all his poetry, what an overflowing of tenderness, 
pity, and affection towards all living creatures that inhabit the 
earth, the water, and the air ! Of all men that ever lived, 
Burns was the least of a sentimentalist ; he was your true Man 
of Feeling. He did not preach to Christian people the duty of 
humanity to animals ; he spoke of them in winning words warm 
from a manliest breast, as his fellow-creatures, and made us feel 
what we owe. What child could well be cruel to a helpless 
animal who had read " The Death and Dying Words of Poor 
Maillie"— or "The Twa Dogs ?" " The Auld Farmer's New- 
year's-day Address to his Auld Mare Maggie" has — we know — 
humanized the heart of a Gilmerton carter. " Not a mouse 
stirring/' are gentle words at that hour from Shakspeare — when 
thinking of the ghost of a king; and he would have loved bro- 
ther Burns for saying — " What makes thee startle, at me thy 
poor earth-born companion and fellow mortal!" Safe-housed at 
fall of a stormy winter night, of whom does the poet think, along 
with the unfortunate, the erring, and the guilty of his own race ? 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 119 



" List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle, 
I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 

0' winter war, 
An' thro' the drift, deep -lairing sprattle, 

Beneath a scar. 

" Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, 
That in the merry months o' spring 
Delighted me to hear thee sing, 

What comes o' thee ? 
Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, 
An' close thy e'e ?" 

The poet loved the sportsman ; but lamenting in fancy " Tom 
Samson's Death" — he could not help thinking, that "on his 
mouldering breast, some spitefu' muirfowl bigs her nest." When 
at Kirkoswald studying trigonometry, plane and spherical, he 
sometimes associated with smugglers, but never with poachers. 
You cannot figure to yourself young Robert Burns stealing 
stoopingly along under cover of a hedge, with a long gun and a 
lurcher, to get a shot at a hare sitting, and perhaps washing her 
face with her paws. No tramper ever "coft fur" at Mossgiel 
or Ellisland. He could have joined, had he liked, in the pas- 
sionate ardor of the rod and the gun the net and the leister ; but 
he liked rather to tnink of all those creatures alive and well, 
"in their native element." In his love-song to "the charming 
filette who overset his trigonometry," and incapacitated him for 
the taking of the sun's altitude, he says to her, on proposing to 
take a walk — 

• 
" Now westlin winds, and slaught'ring guns, 
Bring autumn's pleasant weather ; 
The moorcock springs, on whirring wings, 
Amang the blooming heather. 

" The partridge loves the fruitful fells ; 
The plover loves the mountains ; 
The woodcock haunts the lonely dells ; 

The soaring hern the fountains : 
Thro' lofty groves the cushat roves, 
The path of man to shun it ; 



120 THE GENIUS AND 



The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush, 
The spreading thorn the linnet. 

*« Thus ev'ry kind their pleasure find 

The savage and the tender ; 
Some social join, and leagues combine ; 

Some solitary wander : 
Avaunt, away ! the cruel sway, 

Tyrannic man's dominion ; 
The sportsman's joy, the murd'ring cry, 

The flutt'ring, gory pinion !" 

Bruar Water, in his Humble Petition to the Noble Duke of 
Athole, prays that his banks may be made sylvan, that shepherd, 
lover, and bard may enjoy the shades ; but chiefly for sake of 
the inferior creatures. 

" Delighted doubly then, my Lord, 
You'll wander on my banks, 
And listen many a gratefu' bird 
Return you tunefu' thanks." 

The sober laverock — the gowdspink gay — the strong blackbird — 
the clear lint white — the mavis mild and mellow — they will all 
sing " God bless the Duke." And one mute creature will be more 
thankful than all the rest — " coward maukin sleep secure, low in 
her grassy form." You know that he threatened to throw Jem 
Thomson, a farmer's son near Ellisland, into the Nith, for shoot- 
ing at a hare — and in several of his morning landscapes a hare 
is hirpling by. What human and poetical sympathy is there in 
his address to the startled wild fowl on Loch Turit ! He speaks 
of " parent, filial, kindred ties ;." and in the closing lines who 
does not feel that it is Burns that speaks ? 

" Or, if man's superior might, 
Dare invade your native right, 
On the lofty ether borne 
Man with all his powers you scorn ; 
Swiftly seek, on clanging wings, 
Other lakes and other springs ; 
And the foe you cannot brave, 
Scorn, at least, to be his slave." 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 121 

Whatever be his mood, grave or gladsome, mirthful or melan- 
choly — or when sorrow smiles back to joy, or care joins hands 
with folly — he has always a thought to give to them who many 
think have no thought, but who all seemed to him, from highest 
to lowest in that scale of being, to possess each its appropriate 
degree of intelligence and love. In the " Sonnet written on his 
birth-day, January 25th, 1793, on hearing a thrush sing in a 
morning-walk," it is truly affecting to hear how he connects, on 
the sudden, his own condition with all its cares and anxieties, 
with that of the cheerful bird upon the leafless bough — 

" Yet come, thou child of poverty and care, 
The mite high Heaven bestows, that mite with thee I'll share." 

We had intended to speak only of his Songs ; and to them we 
return for a few minutes more, asking you to notice how cheer- 
ing such of them as deal gladsomely with the concerns of this 
world must be to the hearts of them who of their own accord sing 
them to themselves, at easier work, or intervals of labor, or at 
gloaming when the day's darg is done. All partings are not sad — 
most are the reverse ; lovers do not fear that they shall surely 
die the day after they have kissed farewell ; on the contrary they 
trust, with the blessing of God, to be married at the term. 

" Jockey's ta'en the parting kiss, 
O'er the mountains he is gane ; 
And with him is a' my bliss, 

Naught but griefs with me remain. 

" Spare my luve, ye winds that blaw, 
Plashy sleets and beating rain ! 
Spare my luve, thou feathery snaw, 
Drifting o'er the frozen plain. 

" When the shades of evening creep 
O'er the day's fair, gladsome e'e, 
Sound and safely may he sleep, 
Sweetly blythe his waukening be ! 

" He will think on her he loves, 
Fondly he'll repeat her name ; 



122 THE GENIUS AND 



For where'er he distant roves, 
Jockey's heart is still at name." 

There is no great matter or merit, some one may say, in such 
lines as these — nor is there ; but they express sweetly enough 
some natural sentiments, and what more would you have in a 
song ? You have had far more in some songs to which we have 
given the go-by ; but we are speaking now of the class of the 
simply pleasant ; and on us their effect is like that of a gentle 
light falling on a pensive place, when there are no absolute clouds 
in the sky, and no sun visible either, but when that soft effusion, 
we know not whence, makes the whole day that had been some- 
what sad, serene, and reminds us that it is summer. Believing 
you feel as we do, we do not fear to displease you by quoting 
" The Tither Morn." 

" The tither morn, when I forlorn, 

Aneath an aik sat moaning, 
I didna trow, I'd see my jo, 

Beside me, gain the gloaming. 
But he sae trig, lap o'er the rig, 

And dautingly did cheer me, 
When I, what reck, did least expec', 

To see my lad so near me. 

" His bonnet he, a thought ajee, 

Cocked sprush when first he clasp'd me ; 
And I, I wat, wi' fairness grat, 

While in his grips he pressed me. 
Deil take the war ! I late and air, 

Hae wished syne Jock departed; 
But now as glad I'm wi' my lad, 

As short syne broken-hearted. 

" I'm aft at e'en wi' dancing keen, 

When a ? were blithe and merry, 
I carM na by, sae sud was I, 

In absence o' my dearie. 
But praise be blest, my mind's at rest, 

I'm happy wi' my Johnny : 
At kirk and fair, I'll aye be there, 

And be as canty's ony." 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 323 

We believe that the most beautiful of his Songs are dearest to 
the people, and these are the passionate and the pathetic; but 
there are some connected in one way or other with the tender 
passion, great favorites too, from the light and lively, up to the 
humorous and comic — yet among the broadest of that class there 
is seldom any coarseness — indecency never — vulgar you may 
call some of them, if you please ; they were not intended to be 
genteel. Flirts and coquettes of both sexes are of every rank ; 
in humble life the saucy and scornful toss their heads full high, 
or "go by like stoure;" "for sake o' gowd she left me" is a 
complaint heard in all circles ; " although the night be neer sae 
wet, and he be neer sae weary O," a gentleman of a certain age 
will make himself ridiculous by dropping on the knees of his 
corduroy breeches ; Auntie would fain become a mother, and in 
order thereunto a wife, and waylays a hobbletehoy ; daughters 
the most filial think nothing of breaking their mothers' hearts as 
their grandmothers' were broken before them ; innocents, with 
no other teaching but that of nature, in the conduct of intrigues 
in which verily there is neither shame nor sorrow, become system- 
atic and. consummate hypocrites, not worthy to live — single ; 
despairing swains are saved from suicide by peals of laughter 
from those for whom they fain would die, and so get noosed ; — 
and surely here is a field — indicated and no more — wide enough 
for the Scottish Comic Muse, and would you know how produc- 
tive to the hand of genius you have but to read Burns. 

In one of his letters he says, " If I could, and I believe I do 
it as far as I can, I would wipe away all tears from all eyes." 
His nature was indeed humane ; and the tendernesses and kind- 
linesses apparent in every page of his poetry, and most of all in 
his Songs — cannot but have a humanizing influence on all those 
classes exposed by the necessities of their condition to many 
causes for ever at work to harden or shut up the heart. Burns 
does not keep continually holding up to them the evils of their 
lot, continually calling on them to endure or to redress ; but 
while he stands up for his Order, its virtues, and its rights, and 
has bolts to hurl at the oppressor, his delight is to inspire con- 
tentment. In that solemn — " Dirge," — a spiritual being, suddenly 
spied in the gloom, seems an Apparition, made sage by sufferings 



124 THE GENIUS AND 



in the flesh, sent to instruct us and all who breathe tha> " Man 
was made to mourn/' 

" Many and sharp the numerous ills 

Inwoven with our frame ! 
More pointed still we make ourselves, 

Regret, remorse, and shame ! 
And man, whose heaven-erected face 

The smiles of love adorn, 
Man's inhumanity to man, 

Makes countless thousands mourn ! 

" See yonder poor, o'er-labor'd wight, 

So abject, mean, and vile, 
Who begs a brother of the earth 

To give him leave to toil ; 
And see his lordly fellow-worm 

The poor petition spurn, 
Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife 

And helpless offspring mourn." 

But we shall suppose that " brother of the earth " rotten, and 
forgotten by the " bold peasantry, their country's pride," who 
work without leave from worms. At his work we think we hear 
a stalwart tiller of the soil humming what must be a verse of 
Burns. 

" Is there for honest poverty, 

That hangs his head, and a' that ? 
The coward slave, we pass him by, 

We dare be poor for a' that ! 
What tho' on hamely fare we dine, 

Wear hoddin grey, and a' that ; 
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 

A man's a man for a' that. 

" Then let us pray, that come it may, 

As come it will for a' that, 
That sense and ^orth, o'er a' the earth, 

May bear the gree, and a' that. 
For a' that, and a' that, 

It's coming yet for a' that, 
That man to man, the world o'er, 

Shall brothers be for a' that." 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 125 



A spirit of Independence reigned alike in the Genius and the 
Character of Burns. And what is it but a strong sense of what 
is due to Worth, apart altogether from the distinctions of society 
— the vindication of that Worth being what he felt to be the most 
honored call upon himself in life ? That sense once violated is 
destroyed, and therefore he guarded it as a sacred thing — only 
less sacred than Conscience. Yet it belongs to Conscience, 
and is the prerogative of Man as Man. Sometimes it may seem 
as if he watched it with jealousy, and in jealousy there is always 
weakness, because there is fear. But it was not so ; he felt as- 
sured that his footing was firm and that his back was on a rock. 
No blast could blow, no air could beguile him from the position 
he had taken up with his whole soul in " its pride of place." 
His words were justified by his actions, and his actions truly 
told his thoughts ; his were a bold heart, a bold hand, and a bold 
tongue, for in the nobility of his nature he knew that though born 
and bred in a hovel, he was the equal of the highest in the land ; as 
he was — and no more — of the lowest, so that they too were men. 
For hear him speak — " What signify the silly, idle gew-gaws 
of wealth, or the ideal trumpery of greatness ! When fellow- 
partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same 
benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same de- 
testation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at every- 
thing unworthy — if they are not in the dependence of absolute 
beggary, in the name of common sense are they not equals ? 
And if the bias, the instinctive bias of their souls were the same 
way, why may they not be friends ? He was indeed privileged 
to write that " Inscription for an Altar to Independence." 

" Thou of an independent mind, 

With soul resolved, with soul resigned ; 

Prepared Power's proudest frown to brave, 

Who wilt not be, nor have a slave ; 

Virtue alone who dost revere, 

Thy own reproach alone dost fear, 

Approach this shrine, and worship here." 

Scotland's adventurous sons are now as proud of this moral fea- 
ture of his poetry as of all the pictures it contains of their native 



326 THE GENIUS AND 



country. Bound up in one volume it is the Manual of Inde- 
pendence. Were they not possessed of the same spirit, they 
would be ashamed to open it ; but what they wear they win, 
what they eat they earn, and if frugal they be — and that is the 
right word — it is that on their return they may build a house on 
the site of their father's hut, and proud to remember that he was 
poor, live so as to deserve the blessings of the children of them 
who walked with him to daily labor on what was then no better 
than a wilderness, but has now been made to blossom like the 
rose. Ebenezer Elliot is no flatterer — and he said to a hundred 
and twenty Scotsmen in Sheffield met to celebrate the birth-day 
of Burns — 

" Stern Mother of the deathless dead ! 

Where stands a Scot, a freeman stands ; 
Self-stayed, if poor — self-clothed — self-fed ; 
Mind-mighty in all lands. 

" No wicked plunder need thy sons, 

To save the wretch whom mercy spurns, 
No classic lore thy little ones, 
Who find a Bard in Burns. 

" Their path tho' dark, they may not miss ; 
Secure they tread on danger's brink ; 
They say c this shall be ' and it is : 
For ere they act, they think." 

There are, it is true, some passages in his poetry, and more 
in his letters, in which this Spirit of Independence partakes too 
much of pride, and expresses itself in anger and scorn. These, 
however, were but passing moods, and he did not love to cherish 
them ; no great blame had they been more frequent and perma- 
nent — for his noble nature was exposed to many causes of such 
irritation, but it triumphed over them all. A few indignant 
flashes broke out against the littleness of the great ; but nothing 
so paltry as personal pique inspired him with feelings of hostility 
towards the highest orders. His was an imagination that clothed 
high rank with that dignity which some of the degenerate de- 
scendants of old houses had forgotten ; and whenever true 
noblemen " reverenced the lyre w and grasped the hand of the 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 127 

peasant who had received it from nature as his patrimony. Burns 
felt it to be nowise inconsistent with the stubbornest indepen- 
dence that ever supported a son of the soil in his struggles with 
necessity, reverently to doff his bonnet, and bow his head in 
their presence with proud humility. Jeffrey did himself honor 
by acknowledging that he had been at first misled by occasional 
splenetic passages, in his estimation of Burns's character, and by 
afterwards joining, in eloquent terms, in the praise bestowed by 
other kindred spirits on the dignity of its independence. " It is 
observed,' 5 says Campbell with his usual felicity, " that he boasts 
too much of his independence ; but in reality this boast is neither 
frequent nor obtrusive ; and it is in itself the expression of a 
noble and laudable feeling. So far from calling up disagreeable 
recollections of rusticity, his sentiments triumph, by their natu- 
ral energy, over those false and artificial distinctions which the 
mind is but too apt to form in allotting its sympathies to the sen- 
sibilities of the rich and poor. He carries us into the humble 
scenes of life, not to make us dole out our tribute of charitable 
compassion to paupers and cottagers, but to make us feel with 
them on equal terms, to make us enter into their passions and 
interests, and share our hearts with them as brothers and sisters 
of the human species." 

In nothing else is the sincerity of his soul more apparent than 
in his Friendship. All who had ever been kind to him he loved 
till the last. It mattered not to him what was their rank or con- 
dition- -he returned, and more than returned their affection — he 
was, with regard to such ties, indeed of the family of the faith- 
ful. The consciousness of his infinite superiority to the common 
race of men, and of his own fame and glory as a Poet, never for 
a moment made him forget the humble companions of his obscure 
life, or regard with a haughty eye any face that had ever worn 
towards him an expression of benevolence. The Smiths, the 
Muirs, the Browns, and the Parkers, were to him as the Aikens, 
the Ballantynes, the Hamiltons, the Cunninghams, and the Ains* 
lies — these as the Stewarts, the Gregorys, the Blairs and the 
Mackenzies — these again as the Grahams and the Erskines — 
and these as the Daers, the Glencairns, and the other men of 
rank who were kind to him — all were his friends — his benefac- 



128 THE GENIUS AND 



tors. His heart expanded towards them all, and throbbed with 
gratitude. His eldest son — and he has much of his father's in- 
tellectual power — bears his own Christian name — the others are 
James Glencairn, and William Nicol — so called respectively 
after a nobleman to whom he thought he owed all — and a school- 
master to whom he owed nothing — yet equally entitled to bestow 
—or receive that honor. 

There is a beautiful passage in his Second Common Place 
Book, showing how deeply he felt, and how truly he valued, the 
patronage which the worthy alone can bestow. " What pleasure 
is in the power of the fortunate and happy, by their notice and 
patronage, to brighten the countenance and glad the heart of 
depressed worth ! I am not so angry with mankind for their 
deaf economy of the purse. The goods of this world cannot be 
divided without being lessened ; but why be a niggard of that 
which bestows bliss on a fellow creature, yet takes nothing from 
our own means of enjoyment ? Why wrap ourselves in the 
cloak of our own better fortune, and turn away our eyes lest 
the wants and cares of our brother mortals should disturb the 
selfish apathy of our souls ?" What was the amount of all the 
kindness shown him by the Earl of Glencairn 1 That excellent 
nobleman at once saw that he was a great genius, — gave him 
the hand of friendship — and in conjunction with Sir John White- 
ford got the members of the Caledonian Hunt to subscribe for 
guinea instead of six shilling copies of his volume. That was 
all — and it was well. For that Burns was as grateful as for 
the preservation of life. 

" The bridegroom may forget the bride 

Was made his wedded wife yestreen ; 
The monarch may forget the crown 

That on his head an hour hath been ; 
The mother may forget the child 

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee ; 
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, 

And a 5 that thou hast done for me." 

He went into mourning on the death of his benefactor, and 
desired to know where he was to be buried, that he might attend 
the funeral, and drop a tear into his grave. 

The " Lament for Glencairn " is one of the finest of Ele- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 129 



gies. We cannot agree with those critics — some of them of 
deserved reputation — who have objected to the form in which the 
poet chose to give expression to his grief. Imagination, touched 
by human sorrow, loves to idealize ; because thereby it purifies, 
elevates, and ennobles realities, without impairing the pathos 
belonging to them in nature. Many great poets — nor do we fear 
now to mention Milton among the number — have in such strains 
celebrated the beloved dead. They have gone out, along with 
the object of their desire, from the real living world in which 
they had been united, and shadowed forth in imagery that bears 
a high similitude to it, all that was most spiritual in the com- 
munion now broken in upon by the mystery of death. So it is 
in the Lycidas — and so it is in this " Lament. " Burns imagines 
an aged Bard giving vent to his sorrow for his noble master's 
untimely death, among the " fading yellow woods, that wav'd 
o'er Lugar's winding stream." That name at once awakens in 
us the thought of his own dawning genius ; and though his head 
was yet dark as the raven's wing, and " the locks were bleached 
white with time " of the Apparition evoked with his wailing harp 
among the " winds lamenting thro' the caves," yet we feel on 
the instant that the imaginary mourner is one and the same 
with the real — that the old and the young are inspired with the 
same passion, and have but one heart. We are taken out of 
the present time, and placed in one far remote — yet by such re- 
moval the personality of the poet, so far from being weakened, 
is enveloped in a melancholy light that shows it more endear- 
ingly to our eyes — the harp of other years sounds with the sor- 
row that never dies — the words heard are the everlasting Ian- 
guage of affection — and is not the object of such lamentation 
aggrandized by thus being lifted into the domain of poetry ? 

" I've seen sae mony changefu' years, 

On earth I am a stranger grown ; 
I wander in the ways of men, 

Alike unknowing and unknown ; 
Unheard, unpitied, unreliev'd : 

I bear alane my lade o' care, 
For silent, low, on beds of dust, 

Lie a' that would my sorrows share. 

10 



130 THE GENIUS AND 



•* And last (the sum of a* my griefs !) 
My noble master lies in clay ; 
The Flow'r amang our Barons bold, 

His country's pride, his country's stay " 

We go along with such a mourner in his exaltation of the cha 
racter of the mourned — great must have been the goodness to 
generate such gratitude — that which would have been felt to 
be exaggeration, if expressed in a form not thus imaginative, is 
here brought within our unquestioning sympathy — and we are 
prepared to return to the event in its reality, with undiminished 
fervor, when Burns re-appears in his own character without 
any disguise, and exclaims — 

" Awake thy last sad voice, my harp, 

The voice of wo and wild despair ; 
Awake, resound thy latest lay, 

Then sleep in silence evermair ! 
And thou, my last, best, only friend, 

That fillest an untimely tomb, 
Accept this tribute from the bard 

Thou brought from fortune's mirkest gloom. 

" In poverty's low, barren vale, 

Thick mists, obscure, involv'd me round ; 
Though oft I turned the wistful eye, 

Nae ray of fame was to be found : 
Thou found'st me, like the morning sun, 

That melts the fogs in limpid air, 
The friendless bard and rustic song 

Became alike thy fostering care." 

The Elegy on U Captain Matthew Henderson " — of whom 
little or nothing is now known — is a wonderfully fine flight of 
imagination, but it wants, we think, the deep feeling of the " La- 
ment." It may be called a Rapture. Burns says, " It is a tri- 
bute to a man I loved much ;" and in "The Epitaph" which 
follows it, he draws his character — and a noble one it is — in 
many points resembling his own. With the exception of the 
opening and concluding stanzas, the Elegy consists entirely of a 
supplication to Nature to join with him in lamenting the death 
of the " ae best fellow e'er was born ;" and though to our ears 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 131 

there is something grating in that term, yet the disagreeable- 
ness of it is done away by the words immediately following : 

" Thee, Matthew, Nature's seP shall mourn, 
By wood and wild, 
Where, haply, pity strays forlorn, 

By man exil'd." 

The poet is no sooner on the wing, than he rejoices in his 
strength of pinion, and with equal ease soars and stoops. We 
know not where to look, in the whole range of poetry, for an In- 
vocation to the great and fair objects of the external world, so 
rich and various in imagery, and throughout so sustained ; and 
here again we do not fear to refer to the Lycidas — and to say 
that Robert Burns will stand a comparison with John Milton. 

" But oh, the heavy change, now thou art gone, 
Now thou art gone, and never must return ! 
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves, 
With wild thyme, and the gadding vine o'ergrown, 
And all their echoes mourn : 
The willows and the hazel copses green 
Shall now no more be seen, 
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 
As killing as the canker to the rose, 
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, 
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, 
When first the white-thorn blows ; 
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. 
***** 
* * * Return, Sicilian Muse, 

And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues, 
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use 
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, 
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks, 
Throw hither all your quaint enamelPd eyes, 
That on the green turf suck the honied showers, 
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 
Bring the rath primrose that forsaken dies, 
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 
The white pink, and the pansy freak' d with jet, 
The growing violet, 
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 



1S2 THE GENIUS AND 



With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 
And every flower that sad embroidery wears : 
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, 
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, 
To strew the Laureat herse where Lycid lies." 

Ail who know the " Lycidas," know how impossible it is to 
detach any one single passage from the rest, without marring its 
beauty of relationship— without depriving it of the charm con- 
sisting in the rise and fall — the undulation— in which the whole 
divine poem now gently and now magnificently fluctuates. But 
even when thus detached, the poetry of these passages is exqui- 
site — the expression is perfect— consummate art has crowned 
the conceptions of inspired genius — and shall we dare set by 
their side stanzas written by a ploughman ? We shall. But 
first hear Wordsworth. In the Excursion, the Pedlar says™ 
and the Exciseman corroborates its truth— 

" The poets in their elegies and hymns 
Lamenting the departed, call the groves ; 
They call upon the hills and streams to mourn ; 
And senseless rocks ; nor idly : for they speak 
In these their invocations with a voice 
Of human passion." 

You have heard Milton — -hear Burns — 

" Ye hills, near neebors o' the starns, 
That proudly cock your crested cairns I 
Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns, 

Where echo slumbers I 
Come join ye, Nature's sturdiest bairns ? 
My wailing numbers I 

" Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens ! 
Ye haz'lly shaws and briery dens ! 
Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens> 

Wi' toddlin' din, 
Or foaming Strang, wi' hasty stens, 

Frae linn to linn I 

<c Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea, 
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see,. 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 133 



Ye woodbines, hanging bonnilie, 

In scented bow'rs ; 

Ye roses on your thorny tree, 

The first o' rlow'rs. 

** At dawn, when ev'ry grassy blade 
Droops with a diamond at its head ; 
At ev'n, when beans their fragrance shed, 

P th' rustling gale ; 
Ye maukins whiddin thro' the glade, 

Come join my wail. 

" Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood ; 
Ye grouse that crap the heather bud ; 
Ye kurlews calling thro* a clud ; 

Ye whistling plover ; 
And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood ! 

He's gane for ever ! 

'* Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals ; 
Ye fisher herons, watching eels ; 
Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels 

Circling the lake ; 
Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels, 

Rair for his sake. 

" Mourn, clam'ring craiks at close o' day, 
'Mang fields o' flowing clover gay ; 
And when ye wing your annual way 

Frae our cauld shore, 
Tell thae far worlds, wha lies in clay, 

Wham ye deplore. 

" Ye houlets, frae your ivy bow'r, 
In some auld tree, or eldritch tow'r, 
What time the moon, wi' silent glow'r 

Sets up her horn, 
Wail thro' the dreary midnight hour 

Till waukrife morn ! 

** Oh, rivers, forests, hills, and plains ! 
Oft have ye heard my canty strains : 
But now, what else for me remains 
But tales of wo ? 
And frae my een the drapping rain9 
Maun ever flow. 



134 THE GENIUS AND 



" Mourn, spring, thou darling of the year ! 
Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear : 
Thou, simmer, while each corny spear 
Shoots up its head, 
Thy gay, green, flow'ry tresses shear 

For him that's dead. 

" Thou, autumn, wi' thy yellow hair, 
In grief thy sallow mantle tear ! 
Thou, winter, hurling thro' the air 

The roaring blast, 
Wide o'er the naked world declare 

The worth we've lost ! 

" Mourn him, thou sun, great source of light ! 
Mourn, empress of the silent night ! 
And you, ye twinkling starnies bright, 
My Matthew mourn ! 
For through your orbs he's ta'en his flight, 
Ne'er to return." 

Of all Burns's friends, the most efficient was Graham of Fin- 
try. To him he owed Exciseman's diploma — settlement as a 
gauger in the District of Ten Parishes, when he was gudeman 
at Ellisland — translation as gauger to Dumfries — support against 
insidious foes despicable yet not to be despised with rumor at 
their head — vindication at the Excise Board — pro loco et tempore 
supervisorship — and though he knew not of it, security from 
dreaded degradation on his deathbed. " His First Epistle to. 
Mr. Graham of Fintry " is in the style, shall we say it, of Dry- 
den and Pope 1 It is a noble composition ; and these fine, vigo- 
rous, rough, and racy lines truly and duly express at once his 
independence and his gratitude : 

" Come thou who giv'st with all a courtier's grace ; 
Friend of my life, true patron of my rhymes ! 
Prop of my dearest hopes for future times. 
Why shrinks my soul half blushing, half afraid, 
Backward, abash'd, to ask thy friendly aid ? 
I know my need, I know thy giving hand, 
I crave thy friendship at thy kind command ; 
But there are such who court the tuneful nine — 
Heavens ! shouldHhe branded character be mine ! 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 135 

Whose verse in manhood's pride sublimely flows, 

Yet vilest reptiles in their begging prose. 

Mark, how their lofty independent spirit 

Soars on the spurning wing of injur' d merit ! 

Seek not the proofs in private life to find ; 

Pity the best of words should be but wind ! 

So to heaven's gates the lark's shrill song ascends, 

But groveling on the earth the carol ends. 

In all the clam'rous cry of starving want, 

They dun benevolence with shameless front 

Oblige them, patronise their tinsel lays, 

They persecute you all their future days ! 

Ere my poor soul such deep damnation stain, 

My horny fist assume the plough again ; 

The pie-bald jacket let me patch once more ; 

On eighteen-pence a-week I've liv'd before. 

Tho' thanks to heaven, I dare even that last shift 

I trust, meantime, my boon is in thy gift : 

That, plac'd by thee upon the wish'd-for height, 

Where, man and nature fairer in her sight, 

My muse may imp her wing for some sublimer flight." 

Read over again the last three lines ! The favor requested was 
removal from the laborious and extensive district which he sur- 
veyed for the Excise at Ellisland to one of smaller dimensions 
at Dumfries ! In another Epistle, he renews the request, and 
says most affectingly — 

" I dread thee, fate, relentless and severe, 
With all a poet's, husband's, father's fear ! 
Already one strong hold of hope is lost, 
Glencairn, the truly noble, lies in dust 
(Fled, like the sun eclips'd at noon appears, 
And left us darkling in a world of tears) ; 
Oh ! hear my ardent, grateful, selfish prayer ! — 
Fintry, my other stay, long bless and spare ! 
Thro' a long life his hopes and wishes crown ; 
And bright in cloudless skies his sun go down ! 
May bliss domestic smoothe his private path, 
Give energy to life, and soothe his latest breath, 
With many a filial tear circling the bed of death ?" 

The favor was granted — and in another Epistle was requited 
with immortal thanks. 



136 THE GENIUS AND 



" I call no goddess to inspire my strains, 
A fabled muse may suit a bard that feigns ; 
Friend of my life ! my ardent spirit burns* 
And all the tribute of my heart returns, 
For boons accorded, goodness ever new, 
The gift still dearer, as the giver, you. 

" Thou orb of day ! thy other paler light ! 
And all ye many sparkling stars of night ; 
If aught that giver from my mind efface, 
If I that giver's bounty e'er disgrace ; 
Then roll to me, along your wandering spheres, 
Only to number out a villain's years !" 

Love, Friendship, Independence, Patriotism — these were the 
perpetual inspirers of his genius, even when they did not form 
the theme of his effusions. His religious feelings, his resent- 
ment against hypocrisy, and other occasional inspirations, availed 
only to the occasion on which they appear. But these influence 
him at all times, even while there is not a whisper about them, 
and when himself is unconscious of their operation. Every- 
thing most distinctive of his character will be found to apper- 
tain to them, whether we regard him as a poet or a man. His 
Patriotism was of the true poetic kind — intense — exclusive; 
Scotland and the climate of Scotland were in his eyes the dear- 
est to nature— Scotland and the people of Scotland the mother 
and the children of liberty. In his exultation, when a thought 
of foreign lands crossed his fancy, he asked, " What are they ? 
the haunts of the tyrant and slave." This was neither philoso- 
phical nor philanthropical ; in this Burns was a bigot. And 
the cosmopolite may well laugh to hear the cottager proclaiming 
that "the brave Caledonian views with disdain" spicy forests 
and gold-bubbling fountains with their ore and their nutmegs — 
and blessing himself in scant apparel on " cauld Caledonia's 
blast on the wave." The doctrine will not stand the scrutiny of 
iudgment ; but with what concentrated power of poetry does 
the prejudice burst forth 1 Let all lands have each its own pre- 
judiced, bigoted, patriotic poets, blind and deaf to what lies 
beyond their own horizon, and thus shall the whole habitable 
world in due time be glorified. Shakspeare himself was never 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 137 

so happy as when setting up England in power, in beauty, and 
in majesty above all the kingdoms of the earth. 

In times of national security the feeling of Patriotism among 
the masses is so quiescent that it seems hardly to exist — -in their 
case national glory or national danger awakens it, and it leaps 
up armed cap-a-pie. But the sacred fire is never extinct in a 
nation, and in tranquil times it is kept alive in the hearts of 
those who are called to high functions in the public service — by 
none is it beeted so surely as by the poets. It is the identifica- 
tion of individual feeling and interest with those of a commu- 
nity ; and so natural to the human soul is this enlarged act of 
sympathy, that when not called forth by some great pursuit, 
peril, or success, it applies itself intensely to internal policy ; and 
hence the animosities and rancor of parties, which are evidences, 
nay forms, though degenerate ones, of the Patriotic Feeling ; and 
this is proved by the fact that on the approach of common dan- 
ger, party differences in a great measure cease, and are trans- 
muted into the one harmonious elemental Love of our Native 
Land. Burns was said at one time to have been a Jacobin as 
well as a Jacobite ; and it must have required even all his 
genius to effect such a junction. He certainly wrote some so-so 
verses to the Tree of Liberty, and like Cowper, Wordsworth, 
and other great and good men, rejoiced when down fell the Bas- 
tille. But when there was a talk of taking our Island, he soon 
evinced the nature of his affection for the French. 



" Does haughty Gaul invasion threat ? 
Then let the loons beware, Sir, 
There's wooden walls upon our seas, 

And volunteers on shore, Sir. 
The Nith shall run to Corsincon, 

And Criffel sink in Solway, 
Ere we permit a foreign foe 
On British ground to rally. 

Fall de rail, &c. 

" let us not like snarling tykes 

In wrangling be divided ; 

Till slap come in an unco loon 

And wi' a rung decide it. 



138 THE GENIUS AND 



Be Britain still to Britain true, 

Amang oursels united ; 
For never but by British hands 

Maun British wrangs be righted. 

Fall de raE, fee. 

" The kettle o' the kirk and state, 
Perhaps a claut may fail in 't ; 
But deil a foreign tinker loun 

Shall ever ca' a nail in 't. 
Our fathers' bluid the kettle bought, 

And wha wad dare to spoil it ; 
By heaven the sacrilegious dog 
Shall fuel be to boil it. 

Fall de rail, &c. 

u The wretch that wad a tyrant own, 

And the wretch his true-born brother, 
Who would set the mob aboon the throne, 

May they be damn'd together ! 
Who will not sing, ' God save the King,' 

Shall hang as high 's the steeple ; 
But while we sing, ' God save the King, 5 

We'll ne'er forget the People." 

These are far from being " elegant " stanzas — there is even a 
rudeness about them — but 't is the rudeness of the Scottish Thistle 
— a paraphrase of "nemo me impune lacesset." The staple of 
the war-song is home-grown and home-spun. It flouts the air 
like a banner not idly spread, whereon " the ruddy Lion ramps 
in gold." Not all the orators of the day, in Parliament or out 
of it, in all their speeches put together embodied more political 
wisdom, or appealed with more effective power to the noblest 
principles of patriotism in the British heart. 

" A gentleman of birth and talents " thus writes, in 1835, to 
Allan Cunninghame : " I was at the play in Dumfries, October, 
1792, the Caledonian Hunt being then in town — the play was 
6 As you like it 5 — Miss Fontenelle, Rosalind — when e God save 
the king ' was called for and sung ; we all stood up uncovered, 
but Burns sat still in the middle of the pit, with his hat on his 
head. There was a great tumult, with shouts of < turn him out ' 
and ' shame Burns V which continued a good while ) at last he 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 139 



was either expelled or forced to take off his hat — I forget which" 
And a lady with whom Robert Chambers once conversed, " re- 
membered being present in the theatre of Dumfries, during the 
heat of the Revolution, when Burns entered the pit somewhat 
affected by liquor. On God save the king being struck up, the 
audience rose as usual, all except the intemperate poet, who 
cried for Ca ira. A tumult was the consequence, and Burns 
was compelled to leave the house." We cannot believe that 
Burns ever was guilty of such vulgar insolence — such brutality ; 
nothing else at all like it is recorded of him — and the worthy 
story-tellers are not at one as to the facts. The gentleman's 
memory is defective ; but had he himself been the offender, 
surely he would not have forgot whether he had been compelled to 
take off his hat, or had been jostled, perhaps only kicked out of 
the play-house. The lady's eyes and ears were sharper — for 
she saw " Burns enter the pit somewhat affected by liquor," and 
then heard him " cry for Ca ira." By what means he was 
" compelled to leave the house," she does not say ; but as he 
was " sitting in the middle of the pit," he must have been walked 
out very gently, so as not to have attracted the attention of the 
male narrator. If this public outrage of all decorum, decency, 
and loyalty, had been perpetrated by Burns, in October, one is 
at a loss to comprehend how, in December, he could have been 
" surprised, confounded, and distracted by Mr. Mitchell, the Col- 
lector, telling me that he has received an order for your Board 
to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person 
disaffected to government." The fact we believe to be this — 
that Burns, whose loyalty was suspected, had been rudely com- 
manded to take off his hat by some vociferous time-servers — 
just as he was going to do so — that the row arose from his de- 
clining to uncover on compulsion, and subsided on his disdain- 
fully doffing his beaver of his own accord. Had he cried for 
Ca ira, he would have deserved dismissal from the Excise ; and 
in his own opinion, translation to another post — " Wha will not 
sing God save the King, shall hang as high 's the steeple." The 
year before, " during the heat of the French Revolution," Burns 
composed his grand war-song — " Farewell, thou fair day, thou 
green earth, and ye skies," and sent it to Mrs. Dunlop with these 



140 THE GENIUS AND 



words : "I have just finished the following song, which to a 
lady, the descendant of Wallace, and many heroes of his truly 
illustrious line — and herself the mother of several soldiers — 
needs neither preface nor apology." And the year after, he 
composed "The Poor and Honest Sodger," "which was sung," 
says Allan Cuninghame, " in every cottage, village, and town. 
Yet the man who wrote it was supposed by the mean and the 
spiteful to be no well- wisher to his country f" Why, as men 
who have any hearts at all, love their parents in any circum- 
stances, so they love their country, be it great or small, poor 
or wealthy, learned or ignorant, free or enslaved ; and even 
disgrace and degradation will not quench their filial affection 
to it. But Scotsmen have good reason to be proud of their coun- 
try; not so much for any particular event, as for her whole 
historical progress. Particular events, however, are thought of 
by them as the landmarks of that progress ; and these are the 
great points of history " conspicuous in the nation's eye." 
Earlier times present " the unconquered Caledonian spear ;" 
later, the unequal but generally victorious struggles with the 
sister country, issuing in national independence ; and later still, 
the holy devotion of the soul of the people to their own profound 
religious Faith, and its simple Forms. Would that Burns had 
pondered more on that warfare ! That he had sung its final 
triumph ! But we must be contented with his " Scots wha hae 
wi' Wallace bled ;" and with repeating after it with him, " So 
may God defend the cause of truth and liberty, as he did that 
day ! Amen !" 

Mr. Syme tells us that Burns composed this ode on the 31st 
of July, 1793, on the moor road between Kenmure and Gate- 
house. " The sky was sympathetic with the wretchedness of the 
soil ; it became lowering and dark — the winds signed hollow — 
the lightning gleamed — the thunders rolled. The poet enjoyed 
the awful scene — he spoke not a word — but seemed rapt in me- 
ditation. In a little while the rain began to fall — it poured in 
floods upon us. For three hours did the wild elements rumble 
their bellyful upon our defenceless heads." That is very fine 
indeed ; and " what do you think," asks Mr. Syme, " Burns was 
about ? He was charging the English Army along with Bruce 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 141 



at Bannockburn." On the second of August — when the weather 
was mare sedate — on their return from St. Mary's Isle to Dum- 
fries, " he was engaged in the same manner ;" and it appears 
from one of his own letters, that he returned to the charge one 
evening in September* The thoughts, and feelings, and images, 
came rushing upon him during the storm — they formed them- 
selves into stanzas, like so many awkward squads of raw levies, 
during the serene state of the atmosphere — and under the har- 
vest moon, firm as the measured tread of marching men, with 
admirable precision they wheeled into line. This account of 
the composition of the Ode would seem to clear Mr. Syme from 
a charge nothing short of falsehood brought against him by 
Allan Cuninghame. Mr. Syme's words are, " I said that in the 
midst of the storm, on the wilds of Kenmure, Burns was rapt in 
meditation. What do you think he was about 1 He was charg- 
ing the English army along with Bruce at Bannockburn. He 
was engaged in the same manner in our ride home from St. 
Mary's Isle, and I did not disturb him. Next day he produced 
me the address of Bruce to his troops, and gave me a copy to Dal- 
zellP Nothing can be more circumstantial \ and if not true, it 
is a thumper. Allan says, " Two or three plain words, and a 
stubborn date or two, will go far I fear to raise this pleasing le- 
gend into the regions of romance. The Galloway adventure, 
according to Syme, happened in July ; but in the succeeding 
September, the poet announced the song to Thomson in these 
words : 6 There is a tradition which I have met with in many 
places in Scotland that the air of " Hey tuttie taittie " was Robert 
Bruce's march at the Battle of Bannockburn. This thought in 
my yesternight's evening walk warmed me to a pitch of enthu- 
siasm on the theme of liberty and independence, which i threw 
into a kind of Scottish ode — that one might suppose to be the 
royal Scot's address to his heroic followers on that eventful 
morning. I showed the air to Urbani, who was greatly pleased 
with it, and begged me to make soft verses for it ; but I had no 
idea of giving myself any trouble on the subject till the acci- 
dental recollection of that glorious struggle for freedom, asso- 
ciated with the glowing idea of some other struggles of the same 
nature, not quite so ancient, roused up my rhyming mania ? ' 



142 THE GENIUS AND 

Currie, to make the letter agree with the legend, altered yester- 
night's evening walk into solitary wanderings. Burns was in- 
deed a remarkable man, and yielded no doubt to strange im- 
pulses ; but to compose a song c in thunder, lightning, and in 
rain, 5 intimates such self-possession as few possess. " We can 
more readily believe that Burns wrote "yesternights evening 
walk" to save himself the trouble of entering into any detail of 
his previous study of the subject, than that Syme told a down- 
right lie. As to composing a song in a thunder-storm, Cuning- 
hame — who is himself " a remarkable man," and has composed 
some songs worthy of being classed with those of Burns, would 
find it one of the easiest and pleasantest of feats ; for lightning 
is among the most harmless vagaries of the electric fluid, and in 
a hilly country, seldom singes but worsted stockings and sheep. 
Burns sent the Address in its perfection to George Thomson — 
recommending it to be set to the old air — " Hey tuttie taittie " — 
according to Tradition, who cannot, however, be reasonably ex- 
pected " to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth " — Robert Bruce's march at the Battle of Bannockburn. 
A committee of taste sat on " Hey tuttie taittie," and pronounced 
it execrable. " I happened to dine yesterday," says Mr. Thom- 
son, " with a party of your friends, to whom I read it. They were 
all charmed with it ; entreated me to find out a suitable air for 
it, and reprobated the idea of giving it a tune so totally devoid 
of interest or grandeur as ' Hey tuttie taittie.' Assuredly your 
partiality for this tune must arise from the ideas associated in 
your mind by the tradition concerning it, for I never heard any 
person — and I have conversed again and again with the greatest 
enthusiasts for Scottish airs — I say, I never heard any one speak 
of it as worthy of notice. I have been running over the whole 
hundred airs — of which I have lately sent you the list — and I 
think Lewie Gordon is most happily adapted to your ode, at least 
with a very slight alteration of the fourth line, which I shall 
presently submit to you. Now the variation I have to suggest 
upon the last line of each verse, the only line too short for the 
air, is as follows: Verse 1st, Or to glorious victory. 2d, Chains 
— chains and slavery. 3d, Let him, let him turn and flee. 4th, 
Let him bravely follow me. 5th, But they shall, they shall be 



CHARACTER OF BURNS, 143 

free. 6th, Let us, let us do or die." " Glorious " and " brave- 
ly," bad as they are, especially " bravely," which is indeed 
most bitter bad, might have been borne ; but just suppose for a 
moment, that Robert Bruce had, in addressing his army " on the 
morning of that eventful day," come over again in that odd way 
every word he uttered, " chains — chains;" "let him — let him;" 
"they shall — they shall;" "let us — let us;" why the army 
would have thought him a Bauldy ! Action, unquestionably, is 
the main point in oratory, and Bruce might have imposed on 
many by the peculiar style in which it is known he handled his 
battle-axe, but we do not hesitate to assert that had he stuttered 
in that style, the English would have won the day. Burns 
winced sorely, but did what he could to accommodate Lewie 
Gordon. 

" The only line," said Mr. T., " which I dislike in the whole 
of the song is ' Welcome to your gory bed.' Would not another 
word be preferable to ( welcome V " Mr. T. proposed " hon- 
or's bed ;" but Burns replied, " Your idea of ' honor's bed ' is, 
though a beautiful, a hackneyed idea ; so if you please we will 
let the line stand as it is." But Mr. T. was tenacious — " One 
word more with regard to your heroic ode. I think, with great 
deference to the poet, that a prudent general would avoid saying 
anything to his soldiers which might tend to make death more 
frightful than it is. ' Gory ' presents a disagreeable image to the 
mind ; and to tell them, ' Welcome to your gory bed,' seems 
rather a, discouraging address, notwithstanding the alternative 
which follows. I have shown the song to three friends of excellent 
taste, and each of them objected to this line, which emboldens 
me to use the freedom of bringing it again under your notice. 
I would suggest 'Now prepare for honor's bed, or for glorious 
victory.' " Quoth Burns grimly — " My ode pleases me so much 
that I cannot alter it. Your proposed alteration would, in my 
opinion, make it tame. I have scrutinized it over and over 
again, and to the world some way or other it shall go, as it is." 
That four Scotsmen, taken seriatim et separatim — in the martial ar- 
dor of their patriotic souls should object to " Welcome to your gory 
bed," from an uneommunicated apprehension common to the na- 
ture of then all and operating like an instinct, that it was fitted 



144 THE GENIUS AND 



to frighten Robert Bruce's army, and make it take to its heels, 
leaving the cause of Liberty and Independence to shift for itself, 
is a coincidence that sets at defiance the doctrine of chances, 
proves history to be indeed an old almanack, and national cha- 
racter an empty name. 

" Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 
Scots wham Bruce has aften led, 
Welcome to your gory bed, 
Or to victory. 

" Now's the day, and now's the hour ; 
See the front o' battle lower ; 
See approach proud Edward's power — 
Chains and slavery ! 

" Wha will be a traitor knave ? 
Wha can fill a coward's grave ? 
Wha sae base as be a slave ? 
Let him turn and flee ! 

" Wha for Scotland's king and law 
Freedom's sword will strongly draw, 
Free-man stand, or free-man fa', 
Let him on wi' me ! 

" By oppression's woes and pains ! 
By your sons in servile chains ! 
We will drain our dearest veins, 
But they shall be free ! *. 

" Lay the proud usurpers low ! 
Tyrants fall in every foe ! 
Liberty's in every blow ! 
Let us do, or die !" 

All Scotsmen at home and abroad swear this is the Grandest Ode 
out of the Bible. What if it be not an Ode at all ? An Ode, 
however, let it be ; then, wherein lies the power it possesses of 
stirring up into a devouring fire the p erf ervidum ingenium Scoto- 
rum ? The two armies suddenly stand before us in order of bat- 
tle—and in the grim repose preceding the tempest we hear but 
the voice of Bruce. The whole Scottish army hears it — now 
standing on their feet — risen from their knees as the abbot 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 145 

of Inchchaffray had blessed them and the Banner of Scotland 
with its roots of Stone. At the first six words a hollow murmur 
is in that wood of spears. " Welcome to your gory bed I" a 
shout that shakes the sky. Hush ! hear the King. At Edward's 
name what a yell ! " Wha will be a traitor knave ?" Mutter- 
ing thunder growls reply. The inspired Host in each appeal 
anticipates the Leader — yet shudders with fresh wrath, as if 
each reminded it of some intolerable wrong. " Let us do or 
die " — the English are overthrown — and Scotland is free. 

That is a very Scottish critique indeed — but none the worse 
for that ; so our English friends must forgive it, and be consoled 
by Flodden. The Ode is sublime. Death and Life at that 
hour are one and the same to the heroes. So that Scotland but 
survive, what is breath or blood to them ? Their being is in 
their country's liberty, and with it secured they will live for 
ever. 

Our critique is getting more and more Scottish still ; so to rid 
ourselves of nationality, we request such of you as think we over- 
laud the Ode to point out one word in it that would be better 
away. You cannot. Then pray have the goodness to point out 
one word missing that ought to have been there — please to insert a 
desiderated stanza. You cannot. Then let the bands of all the 
Scottish regiments play " Hey tuittie taitie ;" and the two Dun- 
Edins salute one another with a salvo that shall startle the 
echoes from Berwick-Law to Benmore. 

Of the delight with which Burns labored for Mr. Thomson's 
Collection, his letters contain some lively description. "You 
cannot imagine," says he, 7th April, 1793, (s how much this 
business has added to my enjoyment. What with my early 
attachment to ballads, your book and ballad -making are now as 
completely my hobby as ever fortification was my uncle Toby's ; 
so I'll e'en canter it away till I come to the limit of my race (God 
grant I may take the right side of the winning post), and then, 
cheerfully looking back on the honest folks with whom I have 
been happy, I shall say or sing, c Sae merry as we a' hae been/ 
and raising my last looks to the whole human race, the last 
words of the voice of Coila shall be, < Good night and joy be 
with you a 5 !' " James Gray was the first, who independently 
11 



146 THE GENIUS AND 



of every other argument, proved the impossibility of the charges 
that had too long been suffered to circulate without refutation 
against Burns's character and conduct during his later years, 
by pointing to these almost daily effusions of his clear and un- 
clouded genius. His innumerable Letters furnish the same 
best proof* and when we consider how much of his time was 
occupied by his professional duties, how much by perpetual 
interruption of visitors from all lands, how much by blameless 
social intercourse with all classes in Dumfries and its neighbor- 
hood, and how frequently he suffered under constitutional ail- 
ments affecting the very seat and source of life, we cannot help 
despising the unreflecting credulity of his biographers who with 
such products before their eyes, such a display of feeling, fancy, 
imagination and intellect continually alive and on the alert, 
could keep one after another for twenty years in doleful disser- 
tations deploring over his habits — most of them at the close of 
their wearisome moralizing anxious to huddle all up, that his 
countrymen might not be obliged to turn away their faces in 
shame from the last scene in the Tragedy of the Life of Robert 
Burns. 

During the four years Burns lived in Dumfries he was never 
known for one hour to be negligent of his professional duties. 
We are but imperfectly acquainted with the details of the bu- 
siness of a ganger, but the calling must be irksome ; and he was 
an active, steady, correct, courageous officer — to be relied on 
equally in his conduct and his accounts. Josiah Walker, who 
was himself, if we mistake not, for a good many years in the 
Customs or Excise at Perth, will not allow him to have been a 
good gauger. In descanting on the unfortunate circumstances 
of his situation, he says with a voice of authority, " his superi- 
ors were bound to attend to no qualification, but such as was 
conducive to the benefit of the revenue ; and it would have been 
equally criminal in them to pardon any incorrectness on account 
of his literary genius, as on account of his dexterity in plough- 
ing. The merchant or attorney who acts for himself alone, is 
free to overlook some errors of his clerk, for the sake of merits 
totally unconnected with business ; but the Board of Excise had 
no power to indulge their poetical taste, or their tenderness for 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 147 

him by whom it had been gratified, at the expense of the public. 
Burns was therefore in a place where he could turn his peculiar 
endowments to little advantage ; and where he could not, with- 
out injustice, be preferred to the most obtuse and uninteresting 
of his brethren, who surpassed him in the humble recommenda- 
tion of exactness, vigilance, and sobriety. Attention to these 
circumstances might have prevented insinuations against the 
liberality of his superior officers, for showing so little desire to 
advance him, and so little indulgence to those eccentricities for 
which the natural temperament of genius could be pleaded. 
For two years, however, Burns stood sufficiently high in the 
opinion of the Board, and it is surely by no means improper, 
that where professional pretensions are nearly balanced, the ad- 
ditional claims of literary talent should be permitted to turn the 
scale. Such was the reasoning of a particular member of the 
Board, whose taste and munificence were of corresponding ex- 
tent, and who saw no injustice in giving some preference to an 
officer who could write permits as well as any other, and poems 
much better." Not for worlds would we say a single syllable 
derogatory from the merits of the Board of Excise. We respect 
the character of the defunct ; and did we not, still we should 
have the most delicate regard to the feelings of its descendants, 
many of whom are probably now prosperous gentlemen. It was 
a Board that richly deserved, in all its dealings, the utmost eulo- 
gies with which the genius and gratitude of Josiah Walker could 
brighten its green cloth. Most criminal indeed would it have 
been in such a Board — most wicked and most sinful — " to par- 
don any incorrectness on account of Burns's literary genius, as 
on account of his dexterity in ploughing." Deeply impressed 
with a sense — approaching to that of awe — of the responsibility 
of the Board to its conscience and its country, we feel that it 
is better late than never, thus to declare before the whole world, 
A.D. 1840, that from winter 1791 to summer 1793, the "Board 
had no power to indulge their poetical taste, or their tender- 
ness for him by whom it had been gratified, at the expense 
of the public." The Board, we doubt not, had a true innate 
poetical taste, and must have derived a far higher and deeper 
delight from the poems than the permits of Burns ; nay, we are 



148 THE GENIUS AND 



willing to believe that it was itself the author of a volume of 
poetry, and editor of a literary journal. 

But surpassing even Josiah Walker in our veneration of the 
Board, we ask, what has all this to do with the character of 
Burns? Its desire and its impotency to promote him are 
granted ; but of what incorrectness had Burns been guilty, 
which it would have been criminal in "the Board to pardon ? 
By whom, among the " most obtuse and uninteresting of his 
brethren," had he been surpassed " in the humble recommen- 
dation of exactness, vigilance, and sobriety ?" Not by a single 
one. Mr. Findlater, who was Burns's supervisor from his ad- 
mission into the Excise, and sat by him the night before he died, 
says, " In all that time, the superintendence of his behavior, 
as an officer of the revenue, was a part of my official pro- 
vince, and it may be supposed I would not be an inattentive 
observer of the general conduct of a man and a poet so cele- 
brated by his countrymen. In the former capacity he was ex- 
emplary in his attention, and was even jealous of the least 
imputation on his vigilance. *"'*-.* It was not till near 
the latter end of his days, that there was any falling off in 
this respect, and this was amply accounted for in the pressure 
of disease and accumulating infirmities. I will farther avow, 
that I never saw him- — which was very frequently while he 
lived at Ellisland — and still more so, almost every day, after he 
removed to Dumfries, but in hours of business he was quite him- 
self, and capable of discharging the duties of his office ; nor 
was he ever known to drink by himself, or ever to indulge in 
the use of liquor on a forenoon. I have seen Burns in all his 
various phases — in his convivial moments, in his sober moods, 
and in the bosom of his family ; indeed, I believe that I saw 
more of him than any other individual had occasion to see, 
after he became an excise officer, and I never beheld any- 
thing like the gross enormities with which he is now charged. 
That when set down on an evening with a few friends whom be 
liked, he was apt to prolong the social hour beyond the bounds 
which prudence would dictate, is unquestionable; but in his 
family I will venture to say he was never otherwise than as 
attentive and affectionate to a high degree." Such is the testi- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 149 

mony of the supervisor respecting the ganger ; and in that ca- 
pacity Burns stands up one of its very best servants before the 
Board. There was no call, therefore, for Josiah's Jeremiad. 
But our words have not been wasted ; for Burns's character has 
suffered far more from such aspersions as these, which, easily 
as they can be wiped away, were too long left as admitted stains 
on his memory, than from definite and direct charges of specific 
facts ; and it is still the duty of every man who writes about 
him, to apply the sponge. Nothing, we repeat, shall tempt us 
to blame or abuse the Board. But we venture humbly to con- 
fess that we do not clearly see that the Board would have been 
" gratifying its tenderness at the expense of the public," had it, 
when told by Burns that he was dying, and disabled by the hand 
of God from performing actively the duties of his temporary su- 
pervisorship, requested its maker to continue to him for a few 
months his full salary — seventy pounds a-year — instead of re- 
ducing it in the proportion of one-half — not because he was a 
genius, a poet, and the author of many immortal productions — 
but merely because he was a man and an exciseman, and 
moreover the father of a few mortal children, who with their 
mother were in want of bread. 

Gray, whom we knew well and highly esteemed, was a very 
superior man to honest Findlater — a man of poetical taste and 
feeling, and a scholar — on all accounts well entitled to speak of 
the character of Burns ; and though there were no bounds to his 
enthusiasm when poets and poetry were the themes of his dis- 
course, he was a worshipper of truth, and rightly believed that 
it was best seen in the light of love and admiration. Compare 
his bold, generous, and impassioned eulogy on the noble quali- 
ties and dispositions of his illustrious friend, with the timid, 
guarded, and repressed praise for ever bordering on censure, of 
biographers who never saw the poet's face, and yet have dared 
to draw his character with the same assurance of certainty in 
their delineations as if they had been of the number of his 
familiars, and had looked a thousand times, by night and day, 
into the saddest secrets of his heart. Far better, surely, in a 
world like this, to do more rather than less than justice to the 
goodness of great men. No fear that the world, in its final 



150 THE GENIUS AND 



judgment, will not make sufficient deduction from the laud, if 
it be exaggerated, which love, inspired by admiration and pity, 
delights to bestow, as the sole tribute now in its power, on the 
virtues of departed genius. Calumny may last for ages — we 
had almost said for ever ; lies have life even in their graves, and 
centuries after they have been interred they will burst their 
cerements, and walk up and down, in the face of day, undistin- 
guishable to the weak eyes oi mortals from truths — till they 
touch ; and then the truths expand, and the lies shrivel up, but 
after a season to reappear, and to be welcomed back again by 
the dwellers in this delusive world. 

" He was courted," says Gray, " by all classes of men for the 
fascinating powers of his conversation, but over his social scene 
uncontrolled passion never presided. Over the social bowl, hi 
wit flashed for hours together, penetrating whatever it struck, 
like the fire from heaven ; but even in the hour of thoughtless 
gaiety and merriment I never knew it tainted by indecency. It 
was playful or caustic by turns, following an allusion through 
all its windings ; astonishing by its rapidity, or amusing by its 
wild originality and grotesque yet natural combinations, but 
never, within my observation, disgusting by its grossness. In 
his morning hours, I never saw him like one suffering from the 
effects of last night's intemperance. He appeared then clear 
and unclouded. He was the eloquent advocate of humanity, jus- 
tice, and political freedom. From his paintings, virtue appeared 
more lovely, and piety assumed a more celestial mien. While 
his keen eye was pregnant with fancy and feeling, and his voice 
attuned to the very passion which he wished to communicate, it 
would hardly have been possible to conceive any being more 
interesting and delightful. * * * The men with whom he gene- 
rally associated, were not of the lowest order. He numbered 
among his intimate friends, many of the most respectable inhab- 
itants of Dumfries and the vicinity. Several of those were 
attached to him by ties that the hand of calumny, busy as it 
was, could never snap asunder. They admired the poet for his 
genius, and loved the man for the candor, generosity, and kind- 
ness of his nature. His early friends clung to him through 
good and bad report, with a zeal and fidelity that prove their 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 151 

disbelief of the malicious stories circulated to his disadvantage. 
Among them were some of the most distinguished characters in 
this country and not a few females, eminent for delicacy, taste, 
and genius. They were proud of his friendship, and cherished 
him to the last moment of his existence. He was endeared 
to them even by his misfortunes, and they still retain for his 
memory that affectionate veneration which virtue alone inspires." 
Gray tells us too that it came under his own view profession- 
ally, that Burns superintended the education of his children — 
and promising children they were, nor has that promise been 
disappointed— with a degree of care that he had never known sur- 
passed by any parent whatever ; that to see him in the happiest 
light you had to see him, as he often did, in his own house, and 
that nothing could exceed the mutual affection between husband 
and wife in that lowly tenement. Yet of this man, Josiah 
Walker, who claims to have been his friend as well as James 
Gray, writes, "soured by disappointment, and stung with oc- 
casional remorse, impatient of finding little to interest him at home, 
and rendered inconstant from returns of his hypochondriacal 
ailment, multiplied by his irregular life, he saw the difficulty of 
keeping terms with the world ; and abandoned the attempt in a 
rash and regardless despair!" 

It may be thought by some that we have referred too fre- 
quently to Walker's Memoir, perhaps that we have spoken of it 
with too much asperity, and that so respectable a person merited 
tenderer treatment at our hands. He was a respectable person, 
and for that very reason, we hope by our strictures to set him 
aside for ever as a biographer of Burns. He had been occasion- 
ally in company with the Poet in Edinburgh, in 1787, and had 
seen him during his short visit at Athol house. " Circumstances 
led him to Scotland in November, 1795, after an absence of eight 
years, and he fe^t strongly prompted " to visit his old friend ; 
for your common-place man immediately becomes hand in glove 
with your man of genius, to whom he has introduced himself, 
and ever after the first interview designates him by that flatter- 
ing appellation " my friend. " " For this purpose I went to 
Dumfries, and called upon him early in the forenoon. I found 
him in a small house of one story. He was sitting in a win* 



152 THE GENIUS AND 

dow-seat reading with the doors open, and the family arrange- 
ments going on in his presence, and altogether without that snug- 
ness and seclusion which a student requires. After conversing 
with him for some time, he proposed a walk, and promised to 
conduct me through some of his favorite haunts. We accord- 
ingly quitted the town, and wandered a considerable way up the 
beautiful banks of the Nith. Here he gave me an account of 
his latest productions, and repeated some satirical ballads which 
he had composed, to favor one of the Candidates at last elec- 
tion. These I thought inferior to his other pieces, though they 
had some lines in which dignity compensated for coarseness. 
He repeated also his fragment of an Ode to Liberty, with marked 
and peculiar energy, and showed a disposition which, however, 
was easily repressed, to throw out political remarks, of the same 
nature with those for which he had been reprehended. On 
finishing our walk, he passed some time with me at the inn, and 
I left him early in the evening, to make another visit at some 
distance from Dumfries. On the second morning after I returned 
with a friend — who was acquainted with the poet — and we found 
him ready to pass a part of the day with us at the inn. On this 
occasion I did not think him quite so interesting as he had ap- 
peared at the outset. His conversation was too elaborate, and 
his expression weakened by a frequent endeavor to give it arti- 
ficial strength. He had been accustomed to speak for applause 
in the circles which he frequented, and seemed to think it ne- 
cessary, in making the most common remark, to depart a little 
from the ordinary simplicity of language, and to couch it in 
something of epigrammatic point. In his praise and censure he 
was so decisive, as to render a dissent from his judgment diffi- 
cult to be reconciled with the laws of good breeding. His wit 
was not more licentious than is unhappily too venial in higher 
circles, though I thought him rather unnecessarily free in the 
avowal of his excesses. Such were the clouds by which the 
pleasures of the evening were partially shaded, but coruscations 
of genius were visible between them. When it began to grow 
late, he showed no disposition to retire, but called for fresh sup- 
plies of liquor with a freedom which might be excusable, as we 
were in an inn, and no condition had been distinctly made, 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 153 

though it might easily have been inferred, had the inference 
been welcome, that he was to consider himself as our guest ; 
nor was it till he saw us worn out, that he departed about three 
in the morning with a reluctance, which probably proceeded 
less from being deprived of our company, than from being con- 
fined to his own. Upon the whole, I found this last interview 
not quite so gratifying as I had expected ; although I discovered 
in his conduct no errors which I had not seen in men who stand 
high in the favor of society, or sufficient to account for the mys- 
terious insinuations which I heard against his character. He on 
this occasion drank freely without being intoxicated — a circum- 
stance from which I concluded, not only that his constitution 
was still unbroken, but that he was not addicted to solitary cor- 
dials ; for if he had tasted liquor in the morning, he must have 
easily yielded to the excess of the evening. He did not, how- 
ever, always escape so well. About two months after, return- 
ing at the same unseasonable hour from a similar revel, in which 
he was probably better supported by his companions, he was so 
much disordered as to occasion a considerable delay in getting 
home, where he arrived with the chill of cold without, and ine- 
briety within," &c. 

And for this the devotee had made what is called " a 
pilgrimage to the shrine of genius " as far as Dumfries ! 
Is this the spirit in which people with strong propensities 
for poetry are privileged to write of poets, long after they 
have been gathered to their rest ? No tenderness — no pity — 
no respect — no admiration — no gratitude — no softening of heart 
— no kindling of spirit — on recollection of his final farewell to 
Robert Burns ! If the interview had not been satisfactory, he 
was bound in friendship to have left no record of it. Silence in 
that case was a duty especially incumbent on him who had 
known Burns in happier times, when " Dukes, and Lords, and 
mighty Earls" were proud to receive the ploughman. He 
might not know it then, but he knew it soon afterwards, that 
Burns was much broken down in body and spirit. 

Those two days should have worn to him in retrospect a 
mournful complexion ; and the more so, that he believed Burns 
to have been then a ruined man in character, which he had once 



154 THE GENIUS AND 



prized above life. He calls upon him early in the forenoon, and 
finds him " in a small house of one story (it happened to have 
two), on a window-seat reading, with the doors open, and the 
family arrangements going on in his presence." After eight 
years' absence from Scotland, did not his heart leap at the sight 
of her greatest son sitting thus happy in his own humble house- 
hold ? Twenty years after, did not his heart melt at the rising 
up of the sanctified image ? No — for the room was " altogether 
without that appearance of snugness and seclusion which a stu- 
dent requires !" The poet conducted him through some of his 
beautiful haunts, and for his amusement let off some of his 
electioneering squibs, which are among the very best ever 
composed, and Whiggish as they are, might have tickled a 
Tory as they jogged along ; but Jos thought them " inferior 
to his other pieces, 5 ' and so no doubt they were to the " Cot- 
tar's Saturday Night," and " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled." 
Perhaps they walked as far as Lincluden — and the bard re- 
peated his famous fragment of an " Ode to Liberty " — with 
"marked and peculiar energy." The listener ought to have 
lost his wits, and to have leapt sky-high. But he who was 
destined to " The Defence of Order," felt himself called by the 
voice that sent him on that mission, to rebuke the bard on 
the banks of his own river — for " he showed a disposition which, 
however, was easily repressed, to throw out political remarks, 
of the same nature with those for which he had been repre- 
hended," three years before by the Board of Excise! Mr. 
Walker was not a Commissioner. Burns, it is true, had been 
told " not to think ;" but here was a favorable opportunity for vio- 
lating with safety that imperial mandate.- Woods have ears, 
but in their whispers they betray no secrets— had Burns talked 
treason, 'twould have been pity to stop his tongue. This world 
is yet rather in the dark as to " the political remarks for which 
he had been reprehended," and as he " threw out some of the 
same nature," why was the world allowed to remain unenlight- 
ened ? What right had Josiah Walker to repress any remarks 
made, in the confidence of friendship, by Robert Burns ? And 
what power ? Had Burns chosen it, he could as easily have 
squabashed Josiah as thrown him into the Nith. He was not to 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 155 

be put down by fifty such ; he may have refrained, but he was 
not repressed, and in courtesy to his companion, treated him 
with an old wife's song. 

The record of the second day is shameful. To ask any per- 
son, however insignificant, to your inn, and then find fault with 
him in a private letter for keeping you out of bed, would not be 
gentlemanly ; but of such an offence twenty years after his death 
publicly to accuse Burns ! No mention is made of dinner — and 
we shrewdly suspect Burns dined at home. However, he gave 
up two days to the service of his friend, and his friend's friend, 
and such was his reward. Why did not this dignified personage 
" repress " Burns's licentious wit as well as his political opi- 
nions ? If it was " not more licentious than is unhappily too ve- 
nial in higher circles," why mention it at all ? What were " the 
excesses " of which he was unnecessarily free in the avowal ? 
They could not have regarded unlawful intercourse with the 
sex — for " they were not sufficient to account for the mysterious 
insinuations against his character," all of which related to wo- 
men. Yet this wretched mixture of meanness, worldliness, and 
morality, interlarded with some liberal sentiment, and spiced with 
spite, absolutely seems intended for a vindication ! 

There are generally two ways at least of telling the same 
story ; and 'tis pity we have not Burns's own account of that long 
sederunt. It is clear that before midnight he had made the dis- 
covery that his right and his left hand assessor were a couple of 
solemn blockheads, and that to relieve the tedium, he kept ply- 
ing them with all manner of bams. Both gentlemen were proba- 
bly in black, and though laymen, decorous as deacons on reli- 
gion and morality — and defenders of the faith — sententious cham- 
pions of Church and State. It must have been amusing to see 
them gape. Nobody ever denied that Burns always conducted 
himself with the utmost propriety in presence of those whom he 
respected for their genius, their learning, or their worth. With- 
out sacrificing an atom of his independence, how deferential, 
nay, how reverential was he in his behavior to Dugald Stewart ! 
Had he and Dr. Blair entertained Burns as their guest in that 
inn, how delightful had been the evening's record ! No such 
" licentious wit as is unhappily too venial in higher circles," 



156 THE GENIUS AND 



would have flowed from his lips — no " unnecessarily free avowal 
of his excesses." He would have delighted the philosopher and 
the divine with his noble sentiments as he had done of old — the 
illustrious Professor would have remembered and heard again 
the beautiful eloquence that charmed him on the Braid-hills. 
There can be nothing unfair surely in the conjecture, that these 
gentlemen occasionally contributed a sentence or two to the stock 
of conversation. They were entertaining Burns, and good man- 
ners must have induced them now and then " here to interpose " 
with a small smart remark — sentiment facete — -or unctuous an- 
ecdote. Having lived in " higher circles," and heard much of 
the " licentious wit unhappily too venial there," we do not well 
see how they could have avoided giung their guest a few speci- 
mens of it. Grave men are often gross — and they were both 
grave as ever was earthenware. Such wit is the most conta- 
gious of any ; and " budge doctors of the Stoic fur " then ex- 
press " Fancies " that are anything but " Chaste and Noble." 
Who knows but that they were driven into indecency by the des- 
peration of self-defence — took refuge in repartee — and fought 
the gauger with his own rod ? That Burns, in the dead silence 
that ever and anon occurred, should have called for " fresh sup- 
plies of liquor," is nothing extraordinary. For there is not in 
nature or in art a sadder spectacle than an empty bottle 
standing in the centre of a circle, equidistant from three 
friends, one of whom had returned to his native land after a 
yearning absence of eight years, another anonymous, and the 
third the author of Scotch Drink and the Earnest Cry. Josiah 
more than insinuates that he himself shy'd the bottle. We more 
than doubt it — we believe that for some hours he turned up his 
little finger as frequently as Burns. He did right to desist as 
soon as he had got his dose, and of that he was not only the best 
but the only judge ; he appears to have been sewn up " when it 
began to grow late ;" Burns was sober as a lark " about three 
in the morning." It is likely enough that " about two months 
after, Burns was better supported by his companions at a similar 
revel " — so much better indeed in every way that the revel was 
dissimilar; but still we cling to our first belief, that the two 
gentlemen in black drank as much as could have been rea- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 157 

sonably expected of them — that is, as much as they could hold — 
had they attempted more, there is no saying what might have 
been the consequences, And we still continue to think, too, that 
none but a heartless man, or a man whose heart had been puffed 
up like a bladder with vanity, would have tagged to the tail of 
his pitiful tale of that night, that cruel statement of " cold with- 
out, and inebriety within," which was but the tittle-tattle of gos- 
sipping tradition, and most probably a lie. 

This is the proper way to treat all such memorabilia — with the 
ridicule of contempt and scorn. Refute falsehood first, and then 
lash the fools that utter it. Much of the obloquy that so long 
rested on the memory of our great National Poet originated in 
frivolous hearsays of his life and conversation, which in every 
telling lost some portion of whatever truth might have belonged 
to them, and acquired at least an equal portion of falsehood, till 
they became unmixed calumnies — many of them of the blackest 
kind — got into print, which is implicitly believed by the million — 
till the simple story, which, as first told, had illustrated some in- 
teresting trait of his character or genius, as last told, redounded * 
to his disgrace, and was listened to by the totally abstinent with 
uplifted eyes, hands, and shoulders, as an anecdote of the dread- 
ful debaucheries of Robert Burns. 

That he did sometimes associate, while in Edinburgh, with 
persons not altogether worthy of him, need not be denied, nor 
wondered at, for it was inevitable. He was not for ever beset 
with the consciousness of his own supereminence. Prudence 
he did not despise, and he has said some strong things in her 
praise ; but she was not, in his system of morality, the Queen 
of Virtues. His genius, so far from separating him from any 
portion of his kind, impelled him towards humanity, without 
fear and without suspicion. No saint or prude was he to shun 
the society of "Jolly companions every one." Though never 
addicted to drinking, he had often set the table in a roar at 
Tarboiton, Mauchline, Kirkoswald, Irvine and Ayr, and was he 
all at once to appear in the character of dry Quaker in Edin- 
burgh ? Were the joys that circle round the flowing bowl to 
be interdicted to him alone, the wittiest, the brightest, the most 
original, and the most eloquent of all the men of his day ? At 



158 THE GENIUS AND 



Ellisland we know for certain, that his domestic life was tem- 
perate and sober ; and that beyond his own doors, his conviviali- 
ties among " gentle and semple," though not unfrequent were 
not excessive, and left his character without any of those deeper 
stains with which it has been since said to have been sullied. It 
is for ever to be lamented that he was more dissipated at Dum- 
fries — how much more — and under what stronger temptations, 
can be told in not many words. But every glass of wine " or 
stouter cheer" he drank — like mere ordinary men too fond of 
the festive hour — seems to have been set down against him as a 
separate sin ; and the world of fashion, and of philosophy too, 
we fear, both of which used him rather scurvily at last, would 
not be satisfied unless Burns could be made out — a drunkard ! 
Had he not been such a wonderful man in conversation, he 
might have enjoyed unhurt the fame of his poetry. But what 
was reading his poetry, full as it is of mirth and pathos, to 
hearing the Poet ! When all were desirous of the company of 
a man of such genius and such dispositions, was it in human 
nature to be always judicious in the selection or rejection of 
associates ? His deepest and best feelings he for the most part 
kept sacred for communion with those who were held by him in 
honor as well as love. But few were utterly excluded from the 
cordiality of one who, in the largeness of his heart, could sym- 
pathize with all, provided he could but bring out by the stroke 
of the keen-tempered steel of his own nature, some latent spark 
of humanity from the flint of theirs ; and it is easy to see with 
what dangers he thus must have been surrounded, when his 
genius and humor, his mirth and glee, his fun and frolic, and all 
the outrageous merriment of his exhilarated or maddened imagi- 
nation came to be considered almost as common property by all 
who chose to introduce themselves to Robert Burns, and thought 
themselves entitled to do so because they could prove they had 
his poems by heart. They sent for the gauger, and the gauger 
came. A prouder man breathed not, but he had never been 
subjected to the ceremonial of manners, the rule of artificial 
life ; and he was ready, at all times, to grasp the hand held out 
in friendship, to go when a message said come, for he knew 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 159 

that his " low-roof 'd house" was honored because by his genius 
he had greatly glorified his people. 

We have seen, from one characteristic instance, how shame- 
fully his condescension must often have been abused ; and no 
doubt but that sometimes he behaved imprudently in such par- 
ties, and incurred the blame of intemperance. Frequently 
must he have joined them with a heavy heart ! How little did 
many not among the worst of those who stupidly stared at the 
"wondrous guest" understand of his real character! How 
often must they have required mirth from him in his melan- 
choly, delight in his despair ! The coarse buffoon ambitious to 
show off before the author of " Tarn o' Shanter " and " The 
Holy Friar " — how could it enter into his fat heart to conceive, 
in the midst of his own roaring ribaldry, that the fire-eyed son 
of genius was a hypochondriac, sick of life ! Why such a 
^ollow would think nothing next morning of impudently telling 
his cronies that on the whole he had been disappointed in the 
Poet. Or m another key, forgetting that the Poet who continued 
to sit late at a tavern table, need own no relationship but that 
of time and place with the proser who was lying resignedly 
( under it, the drunkard boasts all over the city of the glorious 
night he had had with Burns. 

But of the multitudes who thus sought the society of Burns, 
there must have been many in every way qualified to enjoy it. 
His fame had crossed the Tweed ; and though a knowledge of 
his poetry could not then have been prevalent over England, he 
had ardent admirers among the most cultivated classes, before 
whose eyes, shadowed in a language but imperfectly under- 
stood, had dawned a new and beautiful world of rustic life. 
Young men of generous birth, and among such lovers of genius 
some doubtless themselves endowed with the precious gift, 
acquainted with the clod-hoppers of their own country, longed 
to behold the prodigy who had stalked between the stilts of the 
plough in moods of tenderest or loftiest inspiration ; and it is 
pleasing to think that the poet was not seldom made happy by 
such visitors — {hat they carried back with them to their own 
noblest land a still deeper impression of the exalted worth of the 
genius of Caledonia. Nor did the gold coin of the genius of 



160 THE GENIUS AND 



Burns sustain any depreciation during his lifetime in his own 
country. He had that to comfort him — that to glory in till the 
last ; and in his sorest poverty, it must have been his exceeding 
great reward. Ebenezer Elliot has nobly expressed that belief 
— and coupled with it— as we have often done — the best vindi- 
cation of Scotland- — 

" But shall it of our sires be told 

That they their brother poor forsook ? 
no ! for they gave him more than gold ; 
They read the Brave Man's Book." 

What happens during their life, more or less, to all eminent 
men, happened to Bums. Thinking on such things, one some- 
times cannot help believing that man hates to honor man, till 
the power in which miracles have been wrought is extinguished 
or withdrawn ; and then, when jealousy, envy, and all unchari- 
tableness of necessity cease, we confess its grandeur, bow down 
to it, and worship it. But who were they who in his own 
country continued most steadfastly to honor his genius and him- 
self, all through what have been called, truly in some respects, 
falsely in others, his dark days in Dumfries, and on to his 
death ? Not Lords and Earls, not lawyers and wits, not philo- 
sophers and doctors, though among the nobility and gentry, 
among the classes of leisure and of learning, he had friends 
who wished him well, and were not indisposed to serve him ; 
not the male generation of critics, not the literary prigs epicene, 
not of decided sex the blues celestial, though many periods 
were rounded among them upon the Ayrshire ploughman ; but 
the Men of his own Order, with their wives and daughters — 
shepherds, and herdsmen, and ploughmen, delvers and ditchers, 
hewers of wood and drawers of water, soldiers and sailors, 
whether regulars, militia, fencibles, volunteers, on board king's 
or merchant's ship " far, far at sea" or dirt gabbert — within a 
few yards of the land on either side of the Clyde or the Cart — 
the Working People, whatever the instruments of their toil, 
they patronized Burns then, they patronize him now, they would 
not have hurt a hair of his head, they will not hear of any 
dishonor to his dust, they know well what it is to endure, to 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 161 

yield, to enjoy, and to suffer, and the memory of their own bard 
will be hallowed for ever among the brotherhood like a religion. 
In Dumfries — as in every other considerable town in Scotland 
— and we might add England — it was then customary, you know, 
with the respectable inhabitants, to pass a convivial hour or two 
of an evening in some decent tavern or other — and Burns's howf 
was the Globe, kept by honest Mrs. Hyslop, who had a sonsie 
sister, " Anna wi' the gowden locks," the heroine of what in his 
fond deceit he thought was the best of all his songs. The 
worthy towns- folk did not frequent bar, or parlor, or club-room — 
at least they did not think they did — from a desire for drink ; 
though doubtless they often took a glass more than they intend, 
ed, nay, sometimes even two ; and the prevalence of such a 
system of social life, for it was no less, must have given rise, 
with others besides the predisposed, to very hurtful habits. 
They met to expatiate and confer on state affairs — to read the 
newspapers — to talk a little scandal — and so forth — and the 
result was, we have been told, considerable dissipation. The 
system was not excellent ; dangerous to a man whose face was 
always more than welcome ; without whom there was wanting 
the evening or the morning star. Burns latterly indulged too 
much in such compotations, and sometimes drank more than was 
good for him ; but not a man now alive in Dumfries ever saw him 
intoxicated; and the survivors all unite in declaring that he 
cared not whether the stoup were full or empty, so that there 
were conversation — argumentative or declamatory, narrative or 
anecdotal, grave or gay, satirical or sermonic ; nor would any 
of them have hoped to see the sun rise again in this world, had 
Burns portentously fallen asleep. They had much better been, 
one and all of them, even on the soberest nights, at their own 
firesides, or in their beds, and orgies that seemed moderation 
itself in a howf, would have been felt outrageous in a home. But 
the blame, whatever be its amount, must not be heaped on the head 
of Burns, while not a syllable has ever been said of the same 
enormities steadily practised for a series of years by the digni- 
taries of the borough, who by themselves and friends were 
opined to have been from youth upwards among the most sober 
of the children of Adam. Does anybody suppose that Burns 
12 



162 THE GENIUS AND 



would have addicted himself to any meetings considered dis- 
reputable — or that, had he lived now, he would have frequented 
any tavern, except, perhaps, some not unfavored one in the airy 
realms of imagination, and built among the clouds ? 

Malicious people would not have ventured during his lifetime, 
in underhand and undertoned insinuations, to whisper away 
Burns's moral character, nor would certain memorialists have 
been so lavish of their lamentations and regrets over his evil 
habits, had not his political principles during his later years been 
such as to render him with many an object of suspicion equiva- 
lent, in troubled times, to fear and hatred. A revolution that 
shook the foundations on which so many old evils and abuses 
rested, and promised to restore to millions their natural liberties, 
and by that restoration to benefit all mankind, must have agitat- 
ed his imagination to a pitch of enthusiasm far beyond the reach 
of ordinary minds to conceive, who nevertheless thought it no 
presumption on their part to decide dogmatically on the highest 
questions in political science, the solution of which, issuing in 
terrible practice, had upset one of the most ancient, and as it 
had been thought, one of the firmest of thrones. No wonder that 
with his eager and earnest spirit for ever on his lips, he came to 
be reputed a Democrat. Dumfries was a Tory Town, and 
could not tolerate a revolutionary — the term was not in use then 
— a Radical Exciseman. And to say the truth, the idea must 
have been not a little alarming to weak nerves, of Burns as a 
demagogue. With such eyes and such a tongue he would have 
proved a formidable Man of the People. It is certain that he 
spoke and wrote rashly and reprehensibly — and deserved a cau- 
tion from the Board. But not such tyrannical reproof; and 
perhaps it was about as absurd in the Board to order Burns not 
to think, as it would have been in him to order it to think, for 
thinking comes of nature, and not of institution, and 'tis about 
as difficult to control as to create it. He defended himself bold- 
ly, and like a man conscious of harboring in his bosom no evil 
wish to the State. " In my defence to their accusations I said, 
that whatever might be my sentiments of republics, ancient or 
modern, as to Britain I abjured the idea ; that a constitution* 
which in its original principles, experience had proved to be in 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 163 

every way fitted for our happiness in society, it would be insanity 
to sacrifice to an untried visionary theory ; — that in considera- 
tion of my being situated in a department, however humble, im- 
mediately in the hands of people in power, I had forborne taking 
an active part, either personally, or as an author, in the pre- 
sent business of reform ; but that when I must declare my sen- 
timents, I would say there existed a system of corruption be- 
tween the executive power and the representative part of the 
legislature which boded no good to our glorious constitution, 
and which every patriotic Briton must wish to see amended." 
His biographers have had difficulty in forming their opinion as 
to the effect on Burns's mind of the expression of the Board's 
sovereign will and displeasure. Scott, without due considera- 
tion, thought it so preyed on his peace as to render him desperate 
— and has said " that from the moment his hopes of promotion 
were utterly blasted, his tendency to dissipation hurried him pre- 
cipitately into those excesses which shortened his life." Lock- 
hart, on the authority of Mr. Findlater, dissents from that state- 
ment ; Allan Cuninghame thinks it in essentials true, and that 
Burns's letter to Erskine of Mar, " covers the Board of Excise 
and the British Government of that day with eternal shame," 
Whatever may have been the effect of those proceedings on 
Burns's mind, it is certain that the freedom with which he 
gave utterance to his political opinions and sentiments seriously 
injured him in the estimation of multitudes of excellent people 
who thought them akin to doctrines subversive of all government 
but that of the mob. Nor till he joined the Dumfries Volunteers, 
and as their Laureate issued his popular song, that flew over the 
land like wild-fire, " Does haughty Gaul invasion threat ?" was 
he generally regarded as a loyal subject. For two or three 
years he had been looked on with evil eyes, and spoken of in 
evil whispers by too many of the good, and he had himself in 
no small measure to blame for their false judgment of his charac- 
ter. Here are a few of his lines to " The Tree of Liberty :" 

" But vicious folk aye hate to see 
The works of virtue thrive, man ; 
The courtly vermin bann'd the tree, 
And grat to see it thrive, man. 



164 THE GENIUS AND 



King Louis thought to cut it down, 

When it was unco sma', man ; 
For this the watchman crack'd his crown, 

Cut aff his head and a', man. 

" Let Britain boast her hardy oak, 

Her poplar and her pine, man, 
Auld Britain ance could crack her joke, 

And o'er her neighbor shine, man. 
But seek the forest round and round, 

And soon 't will be agreed, man, 
That sic a tree cannot be found 

'Twixt London and the Tweed, man. 

" Wae worth the loon wha woudna eat 

Sic wholesome dainty cheer, man ; 
I'd sell my shoon frae aff my feet 

To taste sic fruit I swear, man. 
Syne let us pra^, auld England may 

Soon plant this far-fam'd tree, man ; 
And blithe we'll sing, and hail the day 

That gave us liberty, man." 

So sunk in slavery at this time was Scotland, that England could 
not sleep in her bed till she had set her sister free — and sent 
down some liberators who narrowly escaped getting hanged by 
this most ungrateful country. Such " perilous stuff" as the 
above might have been indited by Palmer, Gerald, or Marga- 
rot— how all unworthy of the noble Burns ? Of all men then 
in the world, the author of " The Cottar's Saturday Night " was 
by nature the least of a Jacobin. We cannot help thinking that, 
like Byron, he loved at times to astonish dull people by daring 
things, to see how they looked with their hair on end ; and dull 
people — who are not seldom malignant — taking him at his word, 
had their revenge in charging him with all manner of profligacy, 
and fabricating vile stories to his disgrace ; there being nothing 
too gross for the swallow of political rancor. 

It is proved by many very strong expressions in his corre- 
spondence — that the reproof he received from the Board of Ex- 
cise sorely troubled him ; and no doubt it had an evil influence 
on public opinion that did not subside till it was feared he was 
dying, and that ceased for a time only with his death* We have 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 165 

expressed our indignation — our contempt of that tyrannical 
treatment ; and have not withheld our respect — our admiration 
from the characteristic manliness with which he repelled the ac- 
cusations some insidious enemies had secretly sent in to the 
quarter where they knew fatal injury might be done to all his 
prospects in life. But was it possible that his most unguarded, 
rash, and we do not for a moment hesitate to say, blameable ex- 
pression of political opinions adverse to those maintained by all 
men friendly to the government, could be permitted to pass 
without notice ? He had no right to encourage what the gov- 
ernment sought to put down, while he was " their servant in 
a very humble department ;" and though he successfully repelled 
the slanders of the despicable creatures who strove to destroy 
him, even in his high-spirited letter to Erskine there is enough 
to show that he had entered into such an expostulation with the 
Board as must have excited strong displeasure and disapproval, 
which no person of sense, looking back on those most dangerous 
times, can either wonder at or blame. He says in his defence 
before the Board, " I stated that, where I must declare my sen- 
timents, I would say there existed a system of corruption be- 
tween the executive power and the representative part of the 
legislature, which boded no good to our glorious constitution, 
and which every patriotic Briton must wish to see amended." 
From a person in his situation even such a declaration was not 
prudent, and prudence was a duty ; but it is manifest from what 
he adds for Erskine's own ear, that something more lay con- 
cealed in those generalities than the mere words seem to imply. 
" I have three sons, who I see already have brought into the 
world souls ill qualified to inhabit the bodies of Slaves. Can 
I look tamely on, and see any machinations to wrest from them 
the birthright of my boys — the little independent Britons, in 
whose veins runs my blood ? No ; I will not, should my heart's 
blood stream around my attempt to defend it. Does any man 
tell me, that my poor efforts can be of no service, and that it 
does not belong to my humble station to meddle with the con- 
cerns of a nation ?" Right or wrong — and we think they were 
right — the government of the country had resolved to uphold 
principles, to which the man who could not refrain from thus 



166 THE GENIUS AND 



fiercely declaring himself, at the very time all that was dearest 
to him was in peril, could not but be held hostile ; and so far 
from its being their duty to overlook such opinions, because they 
were the opinions of Burns, it was just because they were the 
opinions of Burns that it was their duty to restrain and reprove 
them. He continued too long after this to be by far too out- 
spoken — as we have seen; but that his Scottish soul had in 
aught become Frenchified, we never shall believe, but while we 
live shall attribute the obstinacy with which he persisted to 
sing and say the praises of that people, after they had murdered 
their King and their Queen, and had been guilty of all enormi- 
ties, in a great measure to a haughtiness that could not brook 
to retract opinions he had offensively declared before the faces 
of many whom not without reason he despised — to a horror of 
the idea of any sacrifice of that independent spirit which was 
the very life of his life. Burns had been insulted by those who 
were at once his superiors and his inferiors, and shall Burns 
truckle to "the powers that be ?" At any bidding but that of 
his own conviction swerve a hair's-breadth from his political 
creed 1 No : not even though his reason had told him that some 
of its articles were based in delusion, and if carried into prac- 
tice among his own countrymen, pursuant to the plots of traitors, 
who were indeed aliens in soul to the land he loved, would have 
led to the destruction of that liberty for which he, by the side 
or at the head of his cottage compatriots, would have gladly 
died. 

The evil consequences of all this to Burns were worse than 
you may have imagined, for over and above the lies springing up 
like puddock-stools from domestic middens, an ephemeral brood 
indeed, but by succession perennial, and that even now when you 
grasp them in your hand, spatter vileness in your eyes, like so 
many devil's snuff-boxes— think how injurious to the happiness 
of such a soul as his, to all its natural habitudes, must have been 
the feuds carried on all around him, and in which he with his 
commanding powers too largely mingled, between political par- 
ties in a provincial town, contending as they thought, the one for 
hearths and altars, the other for regeneration of those principles, 
decayed or dead, which alone make hearths and altars sacred, 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 167 

and their defence worth the tears and the blood of brave men 
who would fain be free* His sympathy was " wide and general 
as the casing air ;" and not without violence could it be con- 
tracted "within the circle none dared tread but they/' who 
thought William Pitt the reproach, and Charles Fox the Paragon 
of Animals. Within that circle he met with many good men, 
the Herons, Millers, Riddells, Maxwells, Symes, and so forth ; 
within it too he forgathered with many "a fool and something 
more." Now up to " the golden exhalation of the dawn " of his 
gaugership, Burns had been a Tory, and he heard in " the whis- 
per of a faction " a word unpleasing to a Whiggish ear, turncoat. 
The charge was false, and he disdained it ; but disdain in eyes 
that when kindled up burned like carriage lamps in a dark night, 
frightened the whispering faction into such animosity, that a more 
than usual sumph produced an avenging epigram upon him and 
two other traitors, in which the artist committed a mistake of 
workmanship no subsequent care could rectify : instead of hit- 
ting the right nail on the head, why he hit the wrong nail on the 
point, so no wooden mallet could drive it home. From how 
much social pleasure must not Burns have thus been wilfully 
self-debarred ! From how many happy friendships ! By nature 
he was not vindictive, yet occasionally he seemed to be so, visit- 
ing slight offence with severe punishment, sometimes imagining 
offence when there was none, and in a few instances, we fear, 
satirizing in savage verses not only the innocent, but the virtu- 
ous ; the very beings whom, had he but known them as he might, 
he would have loved and revered — celebrated them living or 
dead in odes, elegies, and< hymns — thereby doing holy service to 
goodness in holding up shining examples to all who longed to do 
well. Most of his intolerant scorn of high rank had the same 
origin — not in his own nature, which was noble, but in prejudi- 
ces thus superinduced upon it which in their virulence were 
mean — though his genius could clothe them in magnificent dic- 
tion, and so justify them to the proud poet's heart. 

It is seldom indeed that Lockhart misses the mark ; but in one 
instance — an anecdote — where it is intended to present the pa- 
thetic, ovir eyes perceive but the picturesque — we allude to the 
tale told him by Davie Macculloch, son of the Laird of Ardwall. 



i 



168 THE GENIUS AND 



t 



"He told me that he was seldom more grieved than when, 
riding into Dumfries one fine summer's evening to attend a 
county ball, he saw Burns walking alone on the shady side of 
the principal street of the town, while the opposite part was gay 
with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn to- 
gether for the festivities of the night, not one of whom appeared 
willing to recognize him. The horseman dismounted and join- 
ed Burns, who on his proposing to him to cross the street, said, 
' Nay, my young friend, that is all over now,' and quoted, after 
a pause, some verses of Lady Grizell Baillie's pathetic ballad 
beginning, < The bonnet stood ance sae fair on his brow,' and 
ending ' And were na my heart light I wad die.' It was little in 
Burns's character to let his feelings on certain subjects escape in 
this fashion. He, immediately after citing these verses, assumed 
the sprightliness of his most pleasing manner ; and taking his 
young friend home with him, entertained him very agreeably 
until the hour of the ball arrived, with a bowl of his usual pota- 
tion, and bonnie Jean's singing of some verses which he had 
recently composed." 'Tis a pretty picture in the style of Wat- 
teau. " The opposite part gay with successive groups of gen- 
tlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the 
night." What were they about, and where were they going ? 
Were they as yet in their ordinary clothes, colts and fillies 
alike, taking their exercise preparatory to the country-dances of 
some thirty or forty couple, that in those days used to try the 
wind of both sexes ? If so, they might have chosen better 
training-ground along the banks of the Nith. Were they all in 
full fig, the females with feathers on their heads, the males with 
chapeaux bas — " stepping westward " arm in arm, in successive 
groups, to the Assembly-room ? In whichever of these two 
pleasant predicaments they were placed, it showed rare perspi- 
cacity in Daintie Davie to discern that not one of them appeared 
I willing to recognize Burns — more especially as he was walking 
| on the other and shady side of the street, and Davie on horse- 
back. By what secret signs did the fair free-masons — for such 
there be — express to their mounted brother their unwillingness 
to recognize from the sunshine of their promenade, the gauger 
walking alone in the shade of his ? Was flirtation at so low an 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 169 

ebb in Dumfries-shire, that the flower of her beaux and belles, 
* " in successive groups, drawn together for the festivities of the 
night," could find eyes for a disagreeable object so many yards 
of causeway remote ? And if Burns observed that they gave 
him the cold shoulder — cut him across the street — on what re- 
condite principle of conduct did he continue to walk there, in 
place of stalking off with a frown to his Howf? And is it high 
Galloway to propose to a friend to cross the street to do the civil 
" to successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, not one of whom 
had appeared willing to recognize him V 9 However it was gal- 
lant under such discouragement to patronize the gauger ; and 
we trust that the " wicked wee bowl," while it detained from, 
and disinclined to, did not incapacitate for the Ball. 

But whence all those expressions so frequent in his corres- 
pondence, and not rare in his poetry, of self-reproach and rueful 
remorse ? From a source that lay deeper than our eyes can 
reach. We know his worst sins, but cannot know his sorrows. 
The war between the spirit and the flesh often raged in his 
nature — as in that of the best of beings who are made — and no 
Christian, without humblest self-abasement, will ever read his 
Confessions. 

" Is there a whim-inspired fool, 
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, 
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool, 

Let him draw near ; 
And owre this grassy heap sing dool, 

And drap a tear. 

" Is there a bard of rustic song, 
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, 
That weekly this area throng, 

0, pass not by ! 
But with a frater-feeling strong, 

Here, heave a sigh. 

" Is there a man, whose judgment clear, 
Can others teach the course to steer, 
Yet runs himself life's mad career, 
Wild as the wave ; 



170 THE GENIUS AND 

Here pause — and, thro' the starting tear s 
Survey this grave. 

"The poor inhabitant below 
Was quick to learn, and wise to know, 
And keenly felt the friendly glow, 

And softer flame ; 
But thoughtless follies laid him low, 

And stain' d his name ! 

" Reader, attend — whether thy soul 
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole, 
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole, 

In low pursuit ; 
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control, 

Is wisdom's root." 

A Bard's Epitaph ! Such his character drawn by himself in 
deepest despondency- — in distraction — in despair calmed while 
he was composing it by the tranquillizing power that ever 
accompanies the action of genius. And shall we judge frm as 
severely as he judged himself, and think worse of him than of 
common men, because he has immortalized his frailties in his 
contrition ? The sins of common men are not remembered in 
their epitaphs. Silence is a privilege of the grave few seek to 
disturb. If there must be no eulogium, our name and age suf- 
fice for that stone — and whatever may have been thought of us, 
there are some to drop a tear on our " forlorn hie jacet/' Burns 
wrote those lines in the very prime of youthful manhood. You 
know what produced them — his miserable attachment to her 
who became his wife. He was then indeed most miserable— 
afterwards most happy ; he cared not then though he should die 
— all his other offences rose against him in that agony ; and 
how humbly he speaks of his high endowments, under a sense 
of the sins by which they had been debased ! He repented, and 
sinned again and again ; for his repentance — though sincere — 
was not permanent ; yet who shall say that it was not accepted 
at last ? " Owre this grassy heap sing dool, and drap a tear," 
is an injunction that has been obeyed by many a pitying heart. 
Yet a little while, and his Jean buried him in such a grave. A 
few years more, and a mausoleum was erected by the nation for 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 171 

his honored dust. Now husband and wife lie side by side — 
" in hopes of a joyful resurrection." 

Burns belonged to that order of prevailing poets, with whom 
" all thoughts, all passions, all delights " possess not that entire 
satisfaction nature intends, till they effuse themselves abroad, 
for sake of the sympathy that binds them, even in uttermost 
solitude, to the brotherhood of man. No secrets have they that 
words can reveal. They desire that the whole race shall see 
their very souls — shall hear the very beatings of their hearts. 
Thus they hope to live for ever in kindred bosoms. They feel 
that a greater power is given them in their miseries — for what 
miseries has any man ever harbored in the recesses of his spirit, 
that he has not shared, and will share, with " numbers without 
number numberless " till the Judgment Day ! 

Who reads unmoved such sentences as these ? " The fates 
and characters of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts 
when I am disposed to be melancholy. There is not, among all 
the martyrologies that ever were penned, so woeful a narrative 
as the lives of the Poets. In the comparative view of wretches, 
the question is not what they are doomed to suffer, but how 
they are formed to bear !" Long before the light of heaven 
had ever been darkened or obscured in his conscience by evil 
thoughts or evil deeds, when the bold bright boy, with his thick 
black clustering hair ennobling his ample forehead, was slaving 
for his parents' sakes — Robert used often to lie by Gilbert's 
side all night long without ever closing an eye in sleep ; for that 
large heart of his, that loved all his eyes looked upon of na- 
ture's works living or dead, perfect as was its mechanism for 
the play of all lofty passions, would get suddenly disarranged, 
as if approached the very hour of death. Who will say that 
many more years were likely to have fallen to the lot of one so 
framed, had he all life long drunk, as in youth, but of the 
well-water — " laid down with the dove, and risen with the 
lark!" If excesses in which there was vice and therefore 
blame, did injure his health, how far more those other excesses 
in which there was so much virtue, and on which there should 
be praise for ever ! Over-anxious, over- working hours beneath 
the mid-day sun, and sometimes to save a scanty crop beneath 



172 THE GENIUS AND 



the midnight moon, to which he looked up without knowing it 
with a poet's eyes, as he kept forking the sheaves on the high 
laden cart that " Hesperus, who led the starry host " beheld 
crashing into the barn-yard among shouts of " Harvest Home." 
It has been thought that there are not a few prominent points 
of character common to Burns and Byron ; and though no 
formal comparison between them has been drawn that we know 
of, nor would it be worth while attempting it, as not much would 
come of it, we suspect, without violent stretching and bending 
of materials, and that free play of fancy which makes no bones 
of facts, still there is this resemblance, that they both give unre- 
served expositions of their most secret feelings, undeterred by 
any fear of offending others, or of bringing censure on them- 
selves by such revelations of the inner man. Byron as a moral 
being was below Burns ; and there is too often much affecta- 
tion and insincerity in his Confessions. " Fare thee well, and 
if for ever, still for ever fare thee well," is not elegiac, but 
satirical ; a complaint in which the bitterness is not of grief, 
but of gall ; how unlike " The Lament on the unfortunate issue 
of a Friend's Amour " overflowing with the expression of every 
passion cognate with love's despair ! Do not be startled by our 
asking you to think for a little while of Robert Burns along 
with — Samuel Johnson. Listen to him, and you hear as wise 
and good a man as earth ever saw for ever reproaching himself 
with his wickedness ; " from almost the earliest time he could 
remember he had been forming schemes for a better life." Se- 
lect from his notes, prayers, and diaries, and from the authentic 
records of his oral discourse, all acknowledgments of his evil 
thoughts, practices, and habits ; all charges brought against 
him by conscience, of sins of omission and commission ; all 
declarations, exclamations, and interjections of agonizing re- 
morse and gloomy despair — from them write his character in his 
epitaph — and look there on the Christian Sage ! God forbid ! 
that saving truths should be so changed into destroying false- 
hoods. Slothful, selfish, sensual, envious, uncharitable, undu- 
tiful to his parents, thoughtless of Him who died to save sinners, 
and living without God in the world ;—That is the wretched 
being named Samuel Johnson — in the eyes of his idolatrous 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 178 

countrymen only a little lower than the angels — in his own a 
worm ! Slothful ! yet how various his knowledge ! acquired 
by fits and snatches — book in hand, and poring as if nearly 
sand-blind — yet with eyes in their own range of vision, keen as 
the lynx's or the eagle's — on pages no better than blanks to 
common minds, to his hieroglyphical of wisest secrets — or in 
long assiduity of continuous studies, of which a month to him 
availed more than to you or us a year — or all we have had of 
life. Selfish ! with obscure people, about whom nobody cared, 
provided for out of his slender means within doors, paupers 
though they thought it not, and though meanly endowed by 
nature as by fortune, admitted into the friendship of a Sage 
simple as a child — out of doors, pensioners waiting for him at 
the corners of streets, of whom he knew little, but that they 
were hungry and wanted bread, and probably had been brought 
by sin to sorrow. Sensual ! Because his big body, getting old, 
"needed repairs," and because though " Rasselas Prince of 
Abyssinia " had been written on an empty stomach, which 
happened when he was comparatively young and could not help 
it, now that he had reached his grand climacteric, he was deter- 
mined to show not to the whole world, but to large parties, that 
all the fat of the earth was not meant for the mouths of block- 
heads. Envious ! of David Garrick ? Poh ! poh ! Pshaw ! 
pshaw ! Uncharitable ? We have disposed of that clause of 
the verse in our commentary on " selfish." Undutiful to his 
parents ! He did all man could to support his mother ; and 
having once disobliged his father by sulkily refusing to assist at 
his book-stall, half a century afterwards, more or less, when at 
the head of English literature, and the friend of Burke and 
Beauclerk, he stood bareheaded for an hour in the rain on the 
site of said book-stall, in the market-place of Litchfield, in 
penance for that great sin. As to the last two charges in the 
indictment — if he was not a Christian, who can hope for salva- 
tion in the Cross ? If his life was that of an atheist, who of 
woman born ever walked with God ? Yet it is true he was a 
great sinner. " If we say we have no sin, we deceive our- 
selves, and the truth is not in us ; but if we confess our sins, 



174 THE GENIUS AND 



he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness.' 5 

Burns died in his thirty- eighth year. At that age what had 
Johnson done to be for ever remembered ? He had written Irene, 
London, and the Life of Savage. Of Irene the world makes 
little account — it contains many just and noble sentiments — but 
it is a Tragedy without tears. The Life is an eloquent lie, told 
in the delusion of a friendship sealed by participated sorrows. 
London is a satire of the true moral vein — more sincerely indig- 
nant with the vices it withers than its prototype in Juvenal — 
with all the vigor, without any of the coarseness of Dryden — 
with " the pointed propriety of Pope," and versification almost 
as musical as his, while not so monotonous — an immortal strain. 
But had he died in 1747, how slight had been our knowledge — - 
our interest how dull — in the " Life and Writings of Samuel 
Johnson !" How slight our knowledge ! We should never have 
known that in childhood he showed symptoms " of that jealous 
independence of spirit and impetuosity of temper which never 
forsook him " — as Burns in the same season had showed that 
" stubborn sturdy something in his disposition " which was there 
to the last ; — That he displayed then " that power of memory for 
which he was all his life eminent to a degree almost incredi- 
ble " — as Burns possessed that faculty — so thought Murdoch — 
in more strength than imagination ; — That he never joined the 
other boys in their ordinary diversions " but would wander away 
into the fields talking to himself" — like Burns walking miles 
"to pay his respects to the Leglen wood ;" — That when a boy 
he was immoderately fond of reading romances of chivalry — 
as Burns was of Blind Harry ; — That he fell into " an inatten- 
tion to religion or an indifference about it in his ninth year," and 
after his fourteenth " became a sort of lax talker against re- 
ligion, for he did not much think about it, and this lasted till he 
went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered " — just as the 
child Burns was remarkable for an " enthusiastic idiot piety," 
and had pleasure during some years of his youth in puzzling his 
companions on points in divinity, till he saw his folly, and with- 
out getting his mouth shut, was mute ; — That on his return home 
from Stourbridge school in his eighteenth year " he had no set- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 175 

tied plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from 
day to day " — like Burns who, when a year or two older in his 
perplexity, writes to his father that he knows not what to do, and 
is sick of life ;— That his love of literature was excited by acci- 
dentally finding a folio of Petrarch — as Burns's love of poetry 
was by an octavo Shenstone • — That he thereon became a glut- 
tonous book-devourer — as Burns did — " no book being so volu- 
minous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated as to damp 
his researches;"— That in his twentieth year he felt himself 
" overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irri- 
tation, fretfulness, and impatience, and with a dejection, gloom, 
and despair which rendered existence misery " — as Burns tells 
us he was afflicted — even earlier — -and to the last — -" with a con- 
stitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm that made me fly to 
solitude ** — with horrid flutterings and stoppages of the heart that 
often almost choked him, so that he had to fall out of bed into a 
tub of water to allay the anguish ; — That he was at Pembroke 
College " caressed and loved by all about him as a gay and fro- 
licsome fellow " — while " ah ! Sir, I was mad and violent — it 
was bitterness which they mistook for frolic "—just as Burns 
was thought to be " with his strong appetite for sociality as well 
from native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark/' 
though when left alone desponding and distracted ;■ — That he was 
generally seen lounging at the College gate, with a circle of stu- 
dents round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keep- 
ing from their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion 
against the College discipline, which in his maturer years he so 
much extolled " — as Burns was sometimes seen at the door of a 
Public ridiculing the candles of the Auld Light and even spirit- 
ing the callants against the Kirk itself, which we trust he looked 
on more kindly in future years ; — That he had to quit college 
on his father's bankruptcy soon followed by death, as Burns in 
similar circumstances had to quit Lochlea; — "That in the forlorn 
state of his circumstances, MtaU 23, he accepted of an offer to be 
employed as usher in the school of Market-Bosworth," where he 
was miserable — just as Burns was at the same age, not indeed 
flogging boys but flailing barns, "a poor insignificant devil, un- 
noticed and unknown, and stalking up and down fairs and mar- 



176 THE GENIUS AND 



kets : — That soon after " he published proposals for printing by 
subscription the Latin Poems of Politian at two shillings and 
sixpence, but that there were not subscribers enough to secure a 
sufficient sale, so the work never appeared, and probably never 
was executed " — as Burns soon after issued proposals for print- 
ing by subscription on terms rather higher " among others the 
Ordination, Scotch Drink, the Cottar's Saturday Night, and an 
Address to the Deil," which volume ere long was published ac- 
cordingly and had a great sale ; — That he had, " from early 
youth, been sensible to the influence of female charms, and when 
at Stourbridge school was much enamored of Olivia Lloyd, a 
young Quaker, to whom he wrote a copy of verses " — just as 
Burns was — and did — in the case of Margaret Thomson, in the 
kale-yard at Kirkoswald, and of many others ; — That his "juve- 
nile attachments to the fair sex were however very transient, 
and it is certain that he formed no criminal connection what- 
ever ; Mr. Hector, who lived with him in the utmost intimacy 
and social freedom, having assured me that even at that ardent 
season his conduct was strictly virtuous in that respect " — just 
so with Burns who fell in love with every lass he saw "come 
wading barefoot all alane," while his brother Gilbert gives us 
the same assurance of his continence in all his youthful loves ; — 
That " in a man whom religious education has saved from licen- 
tious indulgences, the passion of love when once it has seized 
him is exceeding strong, and this was experienced by Johnson 
when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter after her 
first husband's death " — as it was unfortunately too much the 
case with Burns, though he did not marry a widow double his 
own age — but one who was a Maid till she met Rob Mossgiel — 
and some six years younger than himself; — That unable to find 
subsistence in his native place, or anywhere else, he was driven 
by want to try his fortune in London, "the great field of genius 
and exertion, where talents of every kind have the fullest scope, 
and the highest encouragement," on his way thither, " riding and 
tying " with Davie Garrick — just as Burns was impelled to 
make an experiment on Edinburgh, journeying thither on foot, 
but without any companion in his adventure ; — that after getting 
on there indifferently well, he returned " in the course of the 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 177 

next summer to Lichfield, where he had left Mrs. Johnson," and 
stayed there three weeks, his mother asking him whether, when in 
London, "He was one of those who gave the wall or those who 
took it" — just as Burns returned to Mauchline, where he had 
left Mrs. Burns, and remained in the neighborhood about the 
same period of time, his mother having said to. him on his return, 
" O, Robert;" — That he took his wife back with him to London, 
resolving to support her the best way he could, by the cultiva- 
tion of the fields of literature, and chiefly through an engage- 
ment as gauger and supervisor to Cave's Magazine — as Burns, 
with similar purposes, and not dissimilar means, brought his wife 
to Ellisland, then to Dumfries ; — That partly from necessity and 
partly from inclination, he used to perambulate the streets of the 
city at all hours of the night, and was far from being prim or 
precise in his company, associating much with one Savage at 
least who had rubbed shoulders with the gallows — just as Burns 
on Jenny Geddes and her successor kept skirring the country at 
all hours, though we do not hear of any of his companions hav- 
ing been stabbers in brothel -brawls ; — That on the publication of 
his u London," that city rang with applause, and Pope pro- 
nounced the author — yet anonymous — a true poet, who would 
soon be deterre, while General Oglethorpe became his patron, 
and such a prodigious sensation did his genius make, that in the 
fulness of his fame, Earl Gower did what he could to set him oa 
the way of being elevated to a schoolmastership in some small 
village in Shropshire or Staffordshire, " of which the certain sal- 
ary was sixty pounds a-year, which would make him happy for 
life " — so said English Earl Gower to an Irish Dean called Jona- 
than Swift — just as Burns soon after the publication of "Tarn 
o' Shanter," was in great favor with Captain Grose — though there 
was then no need for any poet to tell the world he was one, as he 
had been " deterre a year or two before, and by the unexampled 
exertions of Grahame of Fintry, the Earl of Glencairn being 
oblivious or dead, was translated to the diocese of Dumfries, 
where he died in the thirty-eighth year of his age ; the very 
year, we believe, of his, in which Johnson issued the prospectus 
of his Dictionary ; — and here we leave the Lexicographer for a 

13 



178 THE GENIUS AND 



moment to himself, and let our mind again be occupied for a mo- 
ment exclusively by the Exciseman. 

You will not suppose that we seriously insist on this parallel 
as if the lines throughout ran straight ; or that we are not well 
aware that there was far from being in reality such complete 
correspondence of the circumstances — much less the characters 
of the men. But both had to struggle for their very lives — it was 
sink or swim — and by their own buoyancy they were borne up. 
In Johnson's case, there is not one dark stain on the story of all 
those melancholy and memorable years. Hawkins indeed 
more than insinuates that there was a separation between him 
and his wife, at the time he associated with Savage, and used 
with that profligate to stroll the streets ; and that she was 
" harbored by a friend near the Tower ;" but Croker justly re- 
marks—" That there never has existed any human being, all the 
details of whose life, all the motives of whose actions, all the 
thoughts of whose mind, have been so unreservedly brought 
before the public ; even his prayers, his most secret meditations, 
and his most scrupulous self-reproaches, have been laid before 
the world ; and there is not to be found, in all the unparalleled 
information thus laid before us, a single trace to justify the 
accusation which Hawkins so wantonly and so odiously, and it 
may be assumed, so falsely makes. " However, he walked in 
the midst of evil — he was familiar with the faces of the wicked 
— the guilty, as they were passing by, he did not always shun, 
as if they were lepers ; he had a word for them — poor as he 
was, a small coin — for they were of the unfortunate and forlorn, 
and his heart was pitiful. So was that of Burns. Very many 
years Heaven allotted to the Sage, that virtue might be instructed 
by wisdom — all the good acknowledge that he is great — and his 
memory is hallowed for evermore in the gratitude of Christendom. 
In his prime it pleased God to cut off the Poet — but his genius 
too has left a blessing to his own people — and has diffused noble 
thoughts, generous sentiments, and tender feelings over many 
lands, and most of all among them who more especially feel that 
they are his brethren, the Poor who make the Rich, and like him 
are happy, in spite of its hardships, in their own condition. Let 
the imperfections of his character then be spared, if it be even 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 179 

for the sake of his genius ; on higher grounds let it be honored ; 
for if there was much weakness, its strength was mighty, and 
his religious country is privileged to forget his frailties, in 
humble trust that they are forgiven. 

We have said but little hitherto of Burns's religion. Some 
have denied that he had any religion at all— a rash and cruel 
denial — made in the face of his genius, his character, and his 
life. What man in his senses ever lived without religion 1 " The 
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" — was Burns an 
atheist ? We do not fear to say that he was religious far be- 
yond the common run of men, even them who may have had a 
more consistent and better considered creed. The lessons he 
received in the " auld clay biggin " were not forgotten through 
life. He speaks— and we believe him — of his " early ingrained 
piety " having been long remembered to good purpose — what he 
called his "idiot piety" — not meaning thereby to disparage it, 
but merely that it was in childhood an instinct. " Our Father 
which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name !" is breathed from 
the lips of infancy witji the same feeling at its heart that beats 
/.owards its father on earth, as it kneels in prayer by his side. 
No one surely will doubt his sincerity when he writes from Irvine 
to his father— " Honor'd sir — I am quite transported at the 
thought, that e'er long, perhaps soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu 
to all the pains, and uneasinesses, and disquietudes of this weary 
life ; for I assure you I am heartily tired of it, and, if I do not very 
much deceive myself, I could contentedly and gladly resign it. It 
is for this reason 1 am more pleased with the 15th, 16th, and 17th 
verses of the 7th chapter of Revelations, than with any ten 
times as many verses in the whole Bible, and would not exchange 
the noble enthusiasm with which they inspire me, for all that this 
world has to offer. ' 15. Therefore are they before the throne 
of God, and serve him day and night in his temple ; and he that 
sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. 16. They shall 
hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun 
light on them, nor any heat. 17. For the Lamb that is in the 
midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto 
living fountains of waters ; and God shall wipe away ail tears 
from their eyes.' ,f When he gives lessons to a young man for 



180 THE GENIUS AND 



his conduct in. life, one of them is, " The great Creator to 
adore f when he consoles a friend on the death of a relative, 
" he points the brimful grief- worn eyes to scenes beyond the 
grave ;" when he expresses benevolence to a distressed family, 
he beseeches the aid of Him " who tempers the wind to the 
shorn lamb ;-" when he feels the need of aid to control his 
passions, he implores that of the " Great Governor of all below ;" 
when in sickness, he has a prayer for the pardon of all his errors, 
and an expression of confidence in the goodness of God ; when 
suffering from the ills of life, he asks for the grace of resigna- 
tion, "because they are thy will *" when he observes the suffer- 
ings of the virtuous, he remembers a rectifying futurity ; — he is 
religious not only when surprised by occasions such as these, 
but also on set occasions ; he had regular worship in his family 
while at Ellisland — we know not how it was at Dumfries, but 
we do know that there he catechised his children every Sabbath 
evening ; — Nay, he does not enter a Druidical circle without 
a prayer to God. 

He viewed the Creator chiefly in his attributes of love, good- 
ness, and mercy. " In proportion as we are wrung with grief, 
or distracted with anxiety, the ideas of a superintending Deity, 
an Almighty protector, are doubly dear.' 5 Him he never lost 
sight of, or confidence in, even in the depths of his remorse. An 
avenging God was too seldom in his contemplations — from the 
little severity in his own character — from a philosophical view 
of the inscrutable causes of human frailty — and most of all, 
from a diseased aversion to what was so much the theme of the 
sour Calvinism around him ; but which would have risen up an 
appalling truth in such a soul as his, had it been habituated to 
profounder thought on the mysterious corruption of our fallen 
nature. 

Sceptical thoughts as to revealed religion had assailed his 
mind, while with expanding powers it " communed with the glo- 
rious universe ;" and in 1787 he writes from Edinburgh to a 
" Mr. James M'Candlish, student in physic, College, Glasgow," 
who had favored him with a long argumentative infidel letter, "I, 
likewise, since you and I were first acquainted, in the pride of 
despising old women's stories, ventured on 'the daring path 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 181 

Spinoza trod ;' but experience of the weakness, not the strength 
of human powers, made me glad to grasp at revealed religion." 
When at Ellisland, he writes to Mrs. Dunlop, " My idle reason- 
ings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of 
my heart always give the cold philosophizings the lie. Who 
looks for the heart weaned from earth ; the soul affianced to her 
God ; the correspondence fixed with heaven ; the pious suppli- 
cation and devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of 
even and morn ; who thinks to meet with these in the court, the 
palace, in the glare of public life ! No : to find them in their 
precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among 
the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty, and 
distress." And again, next year, from the same place to the 
same correspondent, " That there is an incomprehensibly Great 
Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be inti- 
mately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal 
machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature 
he has made — these are, I think, self-evident propositions. That 
there is a real and eternal distinction between vice and virtue, 
and consequently, that I am an accountable creature ; that from 
the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the 
evident imperfection, nay positive injustice, in the administration 
of affairs, both in the natural and moral worlds, there must be a 
retributive sense of existence beyond the grave, must, I think, 
be allowed by every one who will give himself a moment's re- 
flection. I will go farther and affirm, that from the sublimity, 
excellence, and purity of his doctrine and precepts, unparalleled 
by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding 
ages, though to appearance he was himself the obscurest and 
most illiterate of our species : therefore Jesus was from God." 
Indeed, all his best letters to Mrs. Dunlop are full of the ex- 
pression of religious feeling and religious faith ; though it must 
be confessed with pain, that he speaks with more confidence in 
the truth of natural than of revealed religion, and too often lets 
sentiments inadvertently escape him, that, taken by themselves, 
would imply that his religious belief was but a Christianized 
Theism. Of the immortality of the soul, he never expresses 
any serious doubt, though now and then, his expressions, though 



182 THE GENIUS AND 



beautiful, want their usual force, as if he felt the inadequacy of 
the human mind to the magnitude of the theme. " Ye venerable 
sages, and holy flamens, is there probability in your conjectures, 
truth in your stories, of another world beyond death ; or are 
they all alike baseless visions and fabricated fables ? If there 
is another life, it must be only for the just, the amiable, and the 
humane. What a flattering idea this of the world to come ! 
Would to God I as firmly believed it as I ardently wish it." 

How, then, could honored Thomas Carlyle bring himself to 
affirm, " that Burns had no religion ?" His religion was in much 
imperfect — but its incompleteness you discern only on a survey 
of all his effusions, and by inference ; for his particular expres- 
sions of a religious kind are genuine, and as acknowledgments 
of the superabundant goodness and greatness of God, they are 
in unison with the sentiments of the devoutest Christian. But 
remorse never suggests to him the inevitable corruption of man ; 
Christian humility he too seldom dwells on, though without it 
there cannot be Christian faith ; and he is silent on the need of 
reconcilement between the divine attributes of Justice and 
Mercy. The absence of all this might pass unnoticed, were not 
the religious sentiment so prevalent in his confidential commu- 
nications with his friends in his most serious and solemn moods. 
In them there is frequent, habitual recognition of the Creator ; 
and who that finds joy and beauty in nature has not the same ? 
It may be well supposed that if common men are more ideal in 
religion than in other things, so would be Burns. He who has 
lent the colors of his fancy to common things, would not with- 
hold them from divine. Something — he knew not what — he 
would exact of man — more impressively reverential than any- 
thing he is wont to offer to God, or perhaps can offer in the way 
of institution — in temples made with hands. The heartfelt ado- 
ration always has a grace for him — in the silent bosom — in the 
lonely cottage — in any place where circumstances are a pledge 
of its reality ; but the moment it ceases to be heartfelt, and 
visibly so, it loses his respect, it seems as profanation. 
" Mine is the religion of the breast ;" and if it be not, what is it 
worth ? But it must also revive a right spirit within us ; and 
there may be gratitude for goodness, without such change as is 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 183 

required of us in the gospel. He was too buoyant with immor- 
tal spirit within him not to credit its immortal destination ; he 
was too thoughtful in his human love not to feel how different 
must be our affections if they are towards flowers which the 
blast of death may wither, or towards spirits which are but be- 
ginning to live in our sight, and are gathering good and evil here 
for an eternal life. Burns believed that by his own unassisted 
understanding, and his own unassisted heart, he saw and felt 
those great truths, forgetful of this great truth, that he had been 
taught them in the Written Word. Had all he learned in the 
" auld clay biggin" become a blank — all the knowledge inspired 
into his heart during the evenings, when " the sire turned o'er wi' 
patriarchal air, the big ha'-bible, ance his father's pride," how 
little or how much would he then have known of God and Im- 
mortality 1 In that delusion he shared more or less with one and 
all — whether poets or philosophers — who have put their trust in 
natural Theology. As to the glooms in which his sceptical rea- 
son had been involved, they do not seem to have been so thick — 
so dense — as in the case of men without number, who have, by 
the blessing of God, become true Christians. Of his levities on 
certain celebrations of religious rites, we before ventured an 
explanation ; and while it is to be lamented that he did not more 
frequently dedicate the genius that shed so holy a lustre over 
" The Cottar's Saturday Night," to the service of religion, let it 
be remembered how few poets have done so — alas ! too few — 
that he, like his tuneful brethren, must often have been deterred 
by a sense of his own unworthiness from approaching its awful 
mysteries — and above all, that he was called to his account be- 
fbre he had attained his thoughtful prime. 

And now that we are approaching the close of our Memoir, it 
may be well for a little while clearly to consider Burns's posi- 
tion in this world of ours, where we humans often find ourselves, 
we cannot tell how, in strange positions ; and where there are, 
on all hands, so many unintelligible things going on, that in all 
languages an active existence is assumed of such powers as 
Chance, Fortune, and Fate. Was he more unhappy than the 
generality of gifted men ? In what did that unhappiness con- 
sist ? How far was it owing to himself or others ? 



IU THE GENIUS AND 



We have seen, that up to early manhood his life was virtuous, 
and therefore must have been happy — that by magnanimously 
enduring a hard lot, he made it veritably a light one — and that 
though subject " to a constitutional melancholy or hypochondri- 
asm that made him fly to solitude," he enjoyed the society of his 
own humble sphere with proportionate enthusiasm, and even then 
derived deep delight from his genius. That genius quickly 
waxed strong, and very suddenly he was in full power as a poet. 
No sooner was passion indulged than it prevailed — and he who 
had so often felt during his abstinent sore-toiled youth that " a 
blink of rest's a sweet enjoyment," had now often to rue the 
self-brought trouble that banishes rest even from the bed of labor, 
whose sleep would otherwise be without a dream. " I have for 
some time been pining under secret wretchedness, from causes 
which you pretty well know — the pang of disappointment, the 
sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse, which 
never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when attention is 
not called away by the calls of society, or the vagaries of the 
Muse." These agonies had a well-known particular cause, but 
his errors were frequent and to his own eyes flagrant — yet he 
was no irreligious person — and exclaimed — " Oh ! thou great, 
unknown Power ! thou Almighty God ! who hast lighted up rea- 
son in my breast, and blessed me with immortality ! I have 
frequently wandered from that order and regularity necessary 
for the perfection of thy works, yet thou hast never left me nor 
forsaken me." What signified it to him that he was then very 
poor ? The worst evils of poverty are moral evils, and them he 
then knew not ; nay, in that school he was trained to many vir- 
tues, which might not have been so conspicuous even in his noble 
nature, but for that severest nurture* Shall we ask, what signi- 
fied it to him that he was very poor to the last ? Alas ! it 
signified much ; for when a poor man becomes a husband and a 
father, a new heart is created within him, and he often finds 
himself trembling in fits of unendurable, because unavailing 
fears. Of such anxieties Burns suffered much ; yet better men 
than Burns — better because sober and more religious— have 
suffered far more ; nor in their humility and resignation did they 
say even unto themselves " that God had given their share." 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 185 

His worst sufferings had their source in a region impenetrable 
to the visitations of mere worldly calamities ; and might have 
been even more direful, had his life basked in the beams of for- 
tune, in place of being chilled in its shade. " My mind my 
kingdom is " — few men have had better title to make that boast 
than Burns ; but sometimes raged there plus quam civilia bella — 
and on the rebellious passions, no longer subjects, at times it 
seemed as if he cared not to impose peace. 

Why, then, such clamor about his condition — such outcry 
about his circumstances — such horror of his Excisemanship ? 
Why should Scotland, on whose " brow shame is ashamed to 
sit," hang down her head when bethinking her of how she treat- 
ed him ? Hers the glory of having produced him ; where lies 
the blame of his penury, his soul's trouble, his living body's 
emaciation, its untimely death ? 

His country cried, " All hail, mine own inspired Bard ! " and 
his heart was in heaven. But heaven on earth is a mid-region 
not unvisited by storms. Divine indeed must be the descending 
light, but the ascending gloom may be dismal ; in imagination's 
airy realms the Poet cannot forget he is a Man — his passions 
pursue him thither — and " that mystical roof fretted with golden 
fire, why it appears no other thing to them than a foul and pes- 
tilent congregation of vapors." The primeval curse is felt 
through all the regions of being ; and he who in the desire of 
fame having merged all other desires, finds himself on a sudden 
in its blaze, is disappointed of his spirit's corresponding trans- 
port, without which it is but a glare ; and remembering the sweet 
calm of his obscurity, when it was enlivened not disturbed by 
soaring aspirations, would fain fly back to its secluded shades 
and be again his own lowly natural self in the privacy of his 
own humble birth-place. Something of this kind happened to 
Burns. He was soon sick of the dust and din that attended him 
on his illumined path ; and felt that he had been happier at Moss- 
giel than he ever was in the Metropolis — when but to relieve his 
heart of its pathos, he sung in the solitary field to the mountain 
daisy, than when to win applause, on the crowded street he 
chanted in ambitious strains — 



186 THE GENIUS AND 

" Edina ! Scotia's darling seat ! 

All hail thy palaces and towers, 
Where once beneath a monarch's feet 
Sat legislation's sov'reign powers ! 
From marking wildly-scatter'd flow'rs, 

As on the banks of Ayr I stray' d, 
And singing, lone, the lingering hours, 
I shelter in thy honor'd shade." 

He returned to his natural condition, when he settled at Ellis- 
land. Nor can we see what some have seen, any strong desire 
in him after preferment to a higher sphere. Such thoughts 
sometimes must have entered his mind, but they found no 
permanent dwelling there ; and he fell back, not only without 
pain, but with more than pleasure, on all the remembrances of 
his humble life. He resolved to pursue it in the same scenes, 
and the same occupations, and to continue to be what he had 
always been — a Farmer. 

And why should the Caledonian Hunt have wished to divert 
or prevent him ? Why should Scotland ? What patronage, 
pray tell us, ought the Million and Two Thirds to have bestow- 
ed on their poet ? With five hundred pounds in the pockets of 
his buckskin breeches, perhaps he was about as rich as yourself 
— and then he had a mine — which we hope you have too — in his 
brain. Something no doubt might have been done for him, and 
if you insist that something should, we are not in the humor of 
argumentation, and shall merely observe that the opportunities 
to serve him were somewhat narrowed by the want of special 
preparation for any profession ; but supposing that nobody thought 
of promoting him, it was simply because everybody was think- 
ing of getting promoted himself; and though selfishness is very 
odious, not more so surely in Scotsmen than in other people, ex- 
cept indeed that more is expected from them on account of their 
superior intelligence and virtue. 

Burns's great calling here below was to illustrate the peasant 
life of Scotland. Ages may pass without another arising fit for 
that task ; meanwhile the whole pageant of Scottish life has 
passed away without a record. Let him remain, therefore, in 
the place which best fits him for the task, though it may not be 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 187 

the best for his personal comfort. If an individual can serve 
his country at the expense of his comfort, he must, and others 
should not hinder him ; if self-sacrifice is required of him, they 
must not be blamed for permitting it. Burns followed his call- 
ing to the last, with more lets and hindrances than the friends 
of humanity could have wished ; but with a power that might 
have been weakened by his removal from what he loved and 
gloried in — by the disruption of his heart from its habits, and 
the breaking up of that custom which with many men becomes 
second nature, but which with him was corroboration and sanc- 
tification of the first, both being but one agency — its products 
how beautiful ! Like the flower and fruit of a tree that grows 
well only in its own soil, and by its own river. 

But a Ganger ! What do we say to that ? Was it not most 
unworthy ? We ask, unworthy what ? You answer, his ge- 
nius. But who expects the employments by which men live to 
be entirely worthy of their genius — congenial with their dispo- 
sitions — suited to the structure of their souls ? It sometimes 
happens, but far oftener not — rarely in the case of poets, and 
most rarely of all in the case of such a poet as Burns. It is a 
law of nature that the things of the world come by honest in- 
dustry, and that genius is its own reward, in the pleasure of its 
exertions and its applause. But who made Burns a gauger ? 
Himself. It was his own choice. "I have been feeling all 
the various rotations and movements within respecting the ex- 
cise," he writes to Aiken soon after the Kilmarnock edition. 
" There are many things plead strongly against it," he adds, 
but these were all connected with his unfortunate private affairs ; 
to the calling itself he had no repugnance ; what he most feared 
was " the uncertainty of getting soon into business." To Gra- 
ham of Fintry he writes, a year after the Edinburgh edition, 
" Ye know, I dare say, of an application I lately made to your 
Board to be admitted an officer of excise. I have, according to 
form, been examined by a supervisor, and to-day I gave in two 
certificates, with a request for an order for instructions. In this 
affair, if I succeed, I am afraid I shall but too much need a pa- 
tronizing friend. Propriety of conduct as a man, and fidelity 
and attention as an officer, I dare engage for ; but with anything 



188 THE GENIUS AND 



like business, except manual labor, I am totally unacquainted. 
* * I know, Sir, that to need your goodness is to have a claim 
on it ; may 1 therefore beg your patronage to forward me in this 
affair, till I be appointed to a division, where, by the help of 
rigid economy, I will try to support that independence so dear 
to my soul, but which has been too often distant from my situa- 
tion." To Miss Chalmers he writes, "You will condemn me 
for the next step I have taken. I have entered into the excise. 
I have chosen this, my dear friend, after mature deliberation. 
The question is not at what door of fortune's palace we shall 
enter in, but what door does she open for us 1 I got this 
without any hanging on, or mortifying solicitation : it is imme- 
diate support, and though poor in comparison of the last eighteen 
months of my existence, it is plenty in comparison of all my 
preceding life ; besides, the Commissioners are some of them my 
acquaintance, and all of them my firm friends." To Dr. Moore 
he writes, " There is still one thing would make me quite easy. 
I have an excise officer's commission, and I live in the midst of 
a country division. If I were very sanguine, I might hope that 
some of my great patrons might procure me a treasury warrant 
for supervisor, surveyor-general, &c." It is needless to multi- 
ply quotations to the same effect. Burns with his usual good 
sense took into account, in his own estimate of such a calling, 
not his genius, which had really nothing to do with it, but all 
his early circumstances, and his present prospects ; nor does it 
seem at any time to have been a source of much discomfort to 
himself; on the contrary, he looks forward to an increase of its 
emoluments with hope and satisfaction. We are not now speak- 
ing of the disappointment of his hopes of rising in the profes- 
sion, but of the profession itself: " A supervisor's income varies," 
he says, in a letter to Heron of that ilk, " from about a hundred 
and twenty to two hundred a year ; but the business is an inces- 
sant drudgery, and would be nearly a complete bar to every 
species of literary pursuit. The moment I am appointed super- 
visor, I may be nominated on the collector's list ; and this is 
always a business purely of political patronage. A collectorship 
varies much, from better than two hundred a year to near a 
thousand. They also come forward by precedency on the list ; 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 289 

and have, besides a handsome income, a life of complete leisure. 
A life of literary leisure, with a decent competency, is the sum- 
mit of my wishes." With such views, Burns became a gauger 
as well as a farmer ; we can see no degradation in his having 
done so — no reason why whimpering cockneys should continu- 
ally cry " Shame ! shame ! on Scotland " for having let 
" Bunns " — as they pronounce him — adopt his own mode of life. 
Allan Cuninghame informs us that the officers of excise on the 
Nith were then a very superior set of men indeed to those who 
now ply on the Thames, Burns saw nothing to despise in honest 
men who did their duty ; he could pick and choose among them ; 
and you do not imagine that he was obliged to associate exclu- 
sively or intimately with ushers of the rod. Gangers are grega- 
rious, but not so gregarious as barristers and bagmen. The 
Club is composed of gauger, shop-keeper, schoolmaster, surgeon, 
retired merchant, minister, assistant-and-successor, cidevant 
militia captain, one of the heroes of the Peninsula with a 
wooden-leg, and haply a horse-marine. These are the ordinary 
members ; but among the honorary you find men of high de- 
gree, squires of some thousands, and baronets of some hundreds 
a-year. The rise in that department has been sometimes so sud- 
den as to astonish the unexcised. A gauger, of a very few 
years 5 standing, has been known, after a quarter's supervisor- 
ship, to ascend the collector's — and ere this planet had performed 
another revolution round the sun — the Comptroller's chair — 
from which he might well look down on the Chancellor of Eng- 
land. 

Let it not be thought *hat we are running counter to the com- 
mon feeling in what we have now been saying, nor blame us for 
speaking in a tone of levity on a serious subject. We cannot 
bear to hear people at one hour scorning the distinctions of rank, 
and acknowledging none but of worth ; and at another whining 
for the sake of worth without rank, and estimating a man's hap- 
piness — which is something more than his respectability —by the 
amount of his income, or according to the calling from which it 
is derived. Such persons cannot have read Burns. Or do they 
think that such sentiments as " The rank is but the guinea 
stamp, the man's the gowd for a 5 that," are all very fine inverse, 



190 THE GENIUS AND 



but have no place in the prose of life, no application among 
men of sense to its concerns ? But in how many departments 
have not men to addict themselves almost all their lives to the 
performance of duties, which, merely as acts or occupations, are 
in themselves as unintellectual as polishing a pin? Why, a 
pin-polisher may be a poet, who rounds its head an orator, who 
sharpens its point a metaphysician. Wait his time, and you 
hear the first singing like a nightingale in the autumnal season ; 
the second roaring like a bull, and no mistake ; the third, in 
wandering mazes lost, l^p^ prisoner trying to thread the Cretan 
labyrinth without his clue. Let a man but have something that 
he must do or starve, nor be nice about its nature ; and be ye 
under no alarm about the degradation of his soul. Let him 
even be a tailor ; nay, that is carrying the principle too far ; 
but any other handicraft let him for short hours — ten out of the 
eighteen (six he may sleep) for three score years and ten — assi- 
duously cultivate, or if fate have placed him in a ropery, dog- 
gedly pursue ; and if nature have given him genius, he will 
find time to instruct or enchant the world ; if but goodness, time 
to benefit it by his example, " though never heard of half a mile 
from home." 

Who in this country, if you except an occasional statesman, 
take their places at once in the highest grade of their calling ? 
In the learned professions, what obscurest toil must not the 
brightest go through ! Under what a pressure of mean obser- 
vances the proudest stoop their heads ! The color-ensign in a 
black regiment has risen to be colonel in the Rifle-brigade. 
The middy in a gun-brig on the African station has commanded 
a three-decker at Trafalgar. Through successive grades they 
must all go-— the armed and the gowned alike ; the great law of 
advancement holds among men of noble and of ignoble birth, 
not without exceptions indeed in favor of family, and of fortune 
too, more or less frequent, more or less flagrant — but talent, and 
integrity, and honor, and learning, and genius, are not often 
heard complaining of foul play ; if you deny it, their triumph is 
the more glorious, for generally they win the day, and when 
they have won it- — that is, risen in their profession, what be- 
comes of them then ? Soldiers or civilians, they must go where 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 191 

they are ordered, in obedience to the same great law ; they ap- 
peal to their services when insisting on being sent — and in some 
pestilential climate swift death benumbs 

" Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd— 
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre." 

It is drudgery to sit six, or eight, or ten hours a-day as a 
clerk in the India-house ; but Charles Lamb endured it for forty 
years, not without much headache and heartache too, we dare 
say ; but Elia shows us how the unwearied flame of genius 
can please itself by playing in the thickest gloom ; how fancy 
can people dreariest vacancy with rarest creatures holding com- 
munion in quaintest converse with the finest feelings of the 
thoughtful heart- — how eyes dim with poring all day on a ledger,, 
can glisten through the evening, and far on into the night, with 
those alternate visitings of humor and of pathos that for a while 
come and go as if from regions in the spirit separate and apart, 
but ere long by their quiet blending persuade us to believe that 
their sources are close adjacent, and that the streams, when left 
to themselves, often love to unite their courses, and to flow on 
together with merry or melancholy music, just as we choose to 
think it, as smiles may be the order of the hour, or as we may 
be commanded by the touch of some unknown power within us 
to indulge the luxury of tears. 

Why, then, we ask again, such lamentation for the fate of 
Burns ? Why should not he have been left to make his own 
way in life like other men gifted or ungifted ? A man of great 
genius in the prime of life is poor. But his poverty did not for 
any long time necessarily affect the welfare or even comfort of 
the poet, and therefore created no obligation on his country to 
interfere with his lot. He was born and bred in an humble sta- 
tion — but such as it was, it did not impede his culture, fame, 
or service to his people, or rightly considered, his own happi- 
ness ; let him remain in it, or leave it as he will and can, but 
there was no obligation on others to take him out of it. He had 
already risen superior to circumstances — and would do so still ; 
his glory availed much in having conquered them ; give him 



192 THE GENIUS AND 



better, and the peculiar species of his glory will depart. Give 
him better, and it may be, that he achieves no more glory of 
any kind. For nothing is more uncertain than the effects of 
circumstances on character. Some men, we know, are specially 
adapted to adverse circumstances, rising thereby as the kite 
rises to the adverse breeze, and falling when the adversity 
ceases. Such was probably Burns's nature — his genius being 
piqued to activity by the contradictions of his fortune. 

Suppose that some generous rich man had accidentally be- 
come acquainted with the lad Robert Burns, and grieving to 
think that such a mind should continue boorish among boors, 
had, much to his credit, taken him from the plough, sent him to 
College, and given him a complete education. Doubtless he 
would have excelled ; for he was " quick to learn, and wise to 
know." But he would not have been Scotland's Burns. The 
prodigy had not been exhibited of a poet of the first order in 
that rank of life. It is an instructive spectacle for the world, 
and let the instruction take effect by the continuance of the spec- 
tacle for its natural period. Let the poet work at that calling 
which is clearly meant for him — he is " native and endued to 
the element " of his situation — there is no appearance of his be- 
ing alien or strange to it — he professes proudly that his ambition 
is to illustrate the very life he exists in — his happiest moments 
are in doing so — and he is reconciled to it by its being thus 
blended with the happiest exertions of his genius. We must 
look at his lot as a whole — from beginning to end — and so looked 
at it was not unsuitable — but the reverse ; for as to its later af- 
flictions they were not such as of necessity belonged to it, were 
partly owing to himself, partly to others, partly to evil influences 
peculiar not to his calling, but to the times. 

If Burns had not been prematurely cut off, it is not to be 
doubted that he would have got promotion either by favor, or in 
the ordinary course ; and had that happened, he would not have 
had much cause for complaint, nor would he have complained 
that like other men he had to wait events, and reach compe- 
tence or affluence by the usual routine. He would, like other 
men, have then looked back on his narrow circumstances, and 
their privations, as conditions which, from the first, he knew 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 193 



must precede preferment, and would no more have thought such 
hardships peculiar to his lot, than the first lieutenant of a frigate, 
the rough work he had had to perform, on small pay, and no 
delicate mess between decks, when he was a mate, though then 
perhaps a better seaman than the Commodore. 

With these sentiments we do not expect that all who honor 
this Memoir with a perusal will entirely sympathize ; but im- 
perfect as it is, we have no fear of its favorable reception by our 
friends, on the score of its pervading spirit. As to the poor 
creatures who purse up their unmeaning mouths, trying too 
without the necessary feature to sport the supercilious — and in- 
stead of speaking daggers, pip pins against the " Scotch " — 
they are just the very vermin who used to bite Burns, and one 
would pause for a moment in the middle of a sentence to impale 
a dozen of them on one's pen, if they happened to crawl across 
one's paper. But our Southern brethren — the noble English— 
who may not share these sentiments of ours- — will think " more 
in sorrow than in anger " of Burns's fate, and for his sake will 
be loth to blame his mother land. They must think with a sigh 
of their own Bloomfield, and Clare ! Our Burns indeed was a 
greater far ; but they will call to mind the calamities of their 
men of genius, of discoverers in science, who advanced the 
wealth of nations, and died of hunger — of musicians who taught 
the souls of the people in angelic harmonies to commerce with 
heaven, and dropt unhonored into a hole of earth — of painters 
who glorified the very sunrise and sunset, and were buried in 
places for a long time obscure as the shadow of oblivion — and 
surpassing glory and shame of all — 

" Of mighty Poets in their misery dead." 

We never think of the closing years of Burns's life, without 
feeling what not many seem to have felt, that much more of 
their unhappiness is to be attributed to the most mistaken notion 
he had unfortunately taken up, of there being something de- 
grading in genius in writing for money, than perhaps to all other 
Gauses put together, certainly far more than to his professional 
calling, however unsuitable that may have been to a poet. By 
14 



194 THE GENIUS AND 



persisting in a line of conduct pursuant to that persuasion, he 
kept himself in perpetual poverty ; and though it is not possible 
to blame him severely for such a fault, originating as it did in 
the generous enthusiasm of the poetical character, a most seri- 
ous fault it was, and its consequences were most lamentable. 
So far from being an extravagant man, in the common concerns 
of life he observed a proper parsimony ; and they must have 
been careless readers indeed, both of his prose and verse, who 
have taxed him with lending the colors of his genius to set off 
with a false lustre that profligate profuseness, habitual only with 
the selfish, and irreconeileable with any steadfast domestic virtue. 

" To catch dame Fortune's golden smile, 

Assiduous wait upon her ; 
And gather gear by every wile 

That's justified by honor ; 
Not for to hide it in a hedge, 

Nor for a train attendant; 
But for the glorious privilege 

Of being Independent." 

Such was the advice he gave to a young friend in 1786, and in 
1789, in a letter to Robert Ainslie, he says, " Your poets, spend- 
thrifts, and other fools of that kidney pretend, forsooth, to crack 
their jokes on prudence — but 'tis a squalid vagabond glorying 
in his rags. Still, imprudence respecting money matters is 
much more pardonable than imprudence respecting character. 
I have no objections to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few 
instances : but I appeal to your own observation if you have not 
often met with the same disingenuousness, the same hollow- 
hearted insincerity, and disintegrative depravity of principle, in 
the hackneyed victims of profusion, as in the unfeeling child- 
ren of parsimony." Similar sentiments will recur to every one 
familiar with his writings — all through them till the very end. 
His very songs are full of them — many of the best impressively 
nreaehing in sweetest numbers industry and thrift. So was he 
i ivileged to indulge in poetic transports — to picture, without 
• ^proach, the genial hours in the poor man's life, alas t but toe 
unfrequent, and therefore to be enjoyed with a lawful revelry, 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 195 

at once obedient to the iron-tongued knell that commands it to 
cease. So was he justified in scorning the close-fisted niggard- 
liness that forces up one finger after another, as if chirted by 
a screw, and then shows to the pauper a palm with a doit, 
" Take care of the pennies, and the pounds will take care of 
themselves," is an excellent maxim ; but we do not look for illus- 
trations of it in poetry ; perhaps it is too importunate in prose. 
Full-grown moralists and political economists, eager to promote 
the virtue and the wealth of nations, can study it scientifically 
in Adam Smith — but the boy must have two buttons to his fob 
and a clasp, who would seek for it in Robert Burns. The bias 
of poor human nature seems to lean sufficiently to self, and to 
require something to balance it the other way ; what more efc 
fectual than the touch of a poet's finger ? We cannot relieve 
every wretch we meet — yet if we " take care of the pennies, 5 ' 
how shall the hunger that beseeches us on the street get a bap ? 
If we let " the pounds take care of themselves," how shall we 
answer to God at the great day of judgment — remembering 
how often we had let " unpitied want retire to die — " the white- 
faced widow pass us unrelieved, in faded weeds that seemed as 
if they were woven of dust ? 

In his poetry, Burns taught love and pity ; in his life he prac- 
tised them. Nay, though seldom free from the pressure of 
poverty, so ignorant was he of the science of duty, that to the 
very last he was a notorious giver of alms. Many an impostor 
must have preyed on his meal-girnel at Ellisland ; perhaps the 
old sick sailor was one, who nevertheless repaid several weeks' 
board and lodging with a cutter one-foot keel, and six pound 
burthen, which young Bobby Burns — such is this uncertain word 
— grat one Sabbath to see a total wreck far off in the mid-eddies 
of the mighty Nith. But the idiot who got his dole from the 
poet's own hand, as often as he chose to come ehurrmng up the 
Vennel, he was no impostor, and though he had lost his wits, 
retained a sense of gratitude, and returned a blessing in such 
phrase as they can articulate "whose lives are hidden with 
God." 

How happened it, then, that such a man was so neglectful of 
his wife and family, as to let their hearts often ache while he 



196 THE GENIUS AND 



was in possession of a productive genius that might so easily 
have procured for them all the necessaries, and conveniences, 
and some even of the luxuries of life ? By the Edinburgh edi- 
tion of his poems, and the copyright to Creech, he had made a 
little fortune, and we know how well he used it. From the day 
of his final settlement with that money-making, story-telling, 
magisterial bibliopole, who rejoiced for many years in the name 
of Provost — to the week before his death, his poetry, and that 
too sorely against his will, brought him in — ten pounds ! Had 
he thereby annually earned fifty — what happy faces at that fire- 
side ! how different that household ! comparatively how calm 
that troubled life ! 

All the poetry, by which he was suddenly made so famous, had 
been written, as you know, without the thought of money having so 
much as flitted across his mind. The delight of embodying in 
verse the visions of his inspired fancy — of awakening the sympa- 
thies of the few rustic auditors in his own narrow circle, whose 
hearts he well knew throbbed with the same emotions that are dear- 
est to humanity all over the wide world — that had been at first all 
in all to him — the young poet exulting in his power and in the 
proof of his power — till as the assurance of his soul in its divine 
endowment waxed stronger and stronger he beheld his country's 
muse with the holly-wreath in her hand, and bowed his head to 
receive the everlasting halo. " And take thou this she smiling 
said" — that smile was as a seal set on his fame for ever — 
and " in the old clay biggin " he was happy to the full 
measure of his large heart's desire. His poems grew up like 
flowers before his tread — they came out like singing-birds 
from the thickets — they grew like clouds on the sky — there they 
were in their beauty, and he hardly knew they were his own — 
so quiet had been their creation, so like the process of nature 
among her material loveliness, in the season of spring when life 
is again evolved out of death, and the renovation seems as if it 
would never more need the Almighty hand, in that immortal 
union of earth and heaven. 

You will not think these words extravagant, if you have well 
considered the ecstasy in which the spirit of the poet was lifted 
up above the carking cares of his toilsome life, by the conscious- 






CHARACTER OF BURNS. 197 

ness of the genius that had been given him to idealize it. " My 
heart rejoiced in Nature's joy " he says, remembering the 
beautiful happiness of a summer day reposing on the woods ; 
and from that line we know how intimate had been his com- 
munion with Nature long before he had indited to her a single 
lay of love. And still as he wandered among her secret haunts 
he thought of her poets — with a fearful hope that he might one 
day be of the number— and most of all of Ferguson and Ram- 
say, because they belonged to Scotland, were Scottish in all 
their looks, and all their language, in the very habits of their 
bodies, and in the very frames of their souls — humble names 
now indeed compared with his own, but to the end sacred in his 
generous and grateful bosom ; for at " The Farmer's Ingle " his 
imagination had kindled into the " Cottar's Saturday Night;" 
in the " Gentle Shepherd " he had seen many a happy sight that 
had furnished the matter, we had almost said inspired the emo- 
tion, of some of his sweetest and most gladsome songs. In his 
own every-day working world he walked as a man contented 
with the pleasure arising in his mere human heart ; but that 
world the poet could purify and elevate at will into a celestial 
sphere, still lightened by Scottish skies, still melodious with 
Scottish streams, still inhabited by Scottish life — sweet as reality 
— dear as truth — yet visionary as fiction's dream, and felt to be 
in part the work of his own creation. Proudly, therefore, on 
that poorest soil the peasant poet bade speed the plough — proudly 
he stooped his shoulders to the sack of corn, itself a cart-load — 
proudly he swept the scythe that swathed the flowery herbage 
— proudly he grasped the sickle — but tenderly too he " turned 
the weeder clips aside, and spared the symbol dear" 

Well was he entitled to say to his friend Aiken, in the dedica- 
tory stanza of the Cottar's Saturday Night : 

" My loved, my honored, most respected friend ! 
No mercenary bard his homage pays ; 
With honest pride I scorn each selfish end, 
My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise." 

All that he hoped to make by the Kilmarnock edition was twenty 
pounds to carry him to the West Indies, heedless of the yellow 



198 THE GENIUS AND 



fever. At Edinburgh fortune hand in hand with fame descended 
on the bard in a shower of gold ; but he had not courted " the 
smiles of the fickle goddess/*' and she soon wheeled away with 
scornful laughter out of his sight for ever and a day. His 
poetry had been composed in the fields, with not a plack in the 
pocket of the poet ; and we verily believe that he thought no 
more of the circulating medium than did the poor mouse in 
whose fate he saw his own — but more unfortunate ! 

" Still thou art blest compared wi J me I 
The present only toucheth thee : 
But och ! I backward cast my e'e 

On prospects drear ! 
An 5 forward, though I canna see, 

I guess and fear." 

At Ellisland his colley bore on his collar, " Robert Burns, 
poet;" and on his removal to Dumfries, we know that he in- 
dulged the dream of devoting all his leisure time to poetry — -a 
dream how imperfectly realized ! Poor Johnson, an old Edin- 
burgh friend, begged in his poverty help to his " Museum/ 5 and 
Thomson, not even an old Edinburgh acquaintance, in his pride 
— no ignoble pride — solicited it for his " Collection ;" and fired 
by the thought of embellishing the body of Scottish song, he 
spurned the gentle and guarded proffer of remuneration in 
money, and set to work as he had done of yore in the spirit of 
love, assured from sweet experience that inspiration was its own 
reward. Sell a song ! as well sell a wild-flower plucked from a 
spring-bank at sun-rise. The one pervading feeling does indeed 
expand itself in a song, like a wild flower in the breath and dew 
of morning, which before was but a bud, and we are touched 
with a new sense of beauty at the full disclosure. As a song 
should always be simple, the flower we liken it to is the lily or 
the violet. The leaves of the lily are white, but it is not a 
monotonous whiteness — the leaves of the violet, sometimes " dim 
as the lids of Cytherea's eyes "■ — for Shakspeare has said so — 
are, when well and happy, blue as her eyes themselves, while 
they looked languishingly on Adonis. Yet the exquisite color 
seems of different shades in its rarest richness : and even so as 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 199 

lily or violet shiftingly the same, should be a song in its simpli- 
city, variously tinged with fine distinctions of the one color of 
that pervading feeling — now brighter, now dimmer, as open and 
shut the valve of that mystery, the heart. Sell a song ! No — 
no— said Burns — " You shall have hundreds for nothing — and 
we shall all sail down the stream of time together, now to merry, 
and now to sorrowful music, and the dwellers on its banks, as 
we glide by, shall bless us by name, and call us of the Immor- 
tals." 

It was in this way that Burns was beguiled by the remem- 
brance of the inspirations of his youthful prime, into the belief 
that it would be absolutely sordid to write songs for money ; and 
thus he continued for years to enrich others by the choicest pro- 
ducts of his genius, himself remaining all the while, alas ! too 
poor. The richest man in the town was not more regular in the 
settlement of his accounts, but sometimes on Saturday nights he 
had not wherewithal to pay the expenses of the week's subsist- 
ence, and had to borrow a pound note. He was more ready to 
lend one, and you know he died out of debt. But his family 
suffered privations it is sad to think of — though to be sure the 
children were too young to grieve, and soon fell asleep, and 
Jean was a cheerful creature, strong at heart, and proud of her 
famous Robin, the Poet of Scotland, whom the whole world ad- 
mired, but she alone loved, and so far from ever upbraiding him, 
welcomed him at all hours to her arms and to her heart. It is 
all very fine talking about the delight he enjoyed in the compo- 
sition of his matchless lyrics, and the restoration of all those 
faded and broken songs of other ages, burnished by a few 
touches of his hand to surpassing beauty ; but what we lament 
is, that with the Poet it was not " No song, no supper/ 5 but " No 
supper for any song " — that with an infatuation singular even, 
in the history of the poetic tribe, he adhered to what he had re- 
solved, in the face of distress which, had he chosen it, he could 
have changed into comfort, and by merely doing so as all others 
did, have secured a competency to his wife and children. In- 
fatuation ! It is too strong a word — therefore substitute some 
other weaker in expression of blame — nay, let it be — if so you 
will — S ome gentle term of praise and of pity ; for in this most 



200 THE GENIUS AND 



selfish world, ' tis so rare to be of self utterly regardless, that 
the scorn of pelf may for a moment be thought a virtue, even 
when indulged to the loss of the tenderly beloved. Yet the 
great natural affections have their duties superior over all 
others between man and man ; and he who sets them aside, in 
the generosity or the joy of genius, must frequently feel that by 
such dereliction he has become amenable to conscience, and in 
hours when enthusiasm is tamed by reflection, cannot escape the 
tooth of remorse. 

How it would have kindled all his highest powers, to have felt 
assured that by their exercise in the Poet's own vocation he 
could not only keep want from his door " with stern alarum ban- 
ishing sweet sleep," but clothe, lodge, and board " the wife and 
weans," as sumptuously as if he had been an absolute super- 
visor ! In one article alone was he a man of expensive habits — 
it was quite a craze with him to have his Jean dressed genteelly 
— for she had a fine figure, and as she stepped along the green, 
you might have taken the matron for a maid, so light her foot, so 
animated her bearing, as if care had never imposed any burden 
on her not ungraceful shoulders heavier than the milk-pail she 
had learned at Mossgiel to bear on her head. 'Tis said that she 
was the first in her rank at Dumfries to sport a gingham gown, 
and Burns's taste in ribands had been instructed by the rain- 
bow. To such a pitch of extravagance had he carried his craze 
that when dressed for church, Mrs. Burns, it was conjectured, 
could not have had on her person much less than the value of 
two pounds sterling money, and the boys, from their dress and 
demeanor, you might have mistaken for a gentleman's sons. 
Then he resolved they should have the best education going ; 
and the Hon. the Provost, the Bailies, and Town Council, he pe- 
titioned thus : " The literary taste and liberal spirit of your good 
town have so ably filled the various departments of your schools, 
a£ to make it a very great object for a parent to have his chil- 
dren educated in them ; still, to me a stranger, with my large 
family, and very stinted income, to give my young ones that edu- 
cation I wish, at the high school fees which a stranger pays, 
will bear hard upon me. Some years ago your good town did 
me the honor of making me an honorary burgess, will you then 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 201 

allow me to request, that this mark of distinction may extend so 
far as to put me on a footing of a real freeman in the schools V J 
Had not " his income been so stinted/' we know how he would 
have spent it. 

Then the world— -the gracious and grateful world — " wonder- 
ed and of wondering found no end," how and why it happened 
that Burns was publishing no more poems. What was he about ? 
Had his genius deserted him ? Was the vein wrought out ? of 
fine ore indeed, but thin, and now there was but rubbish. His 
contributions to Johnson were not much known, and but s$me 
six of his songs in the first half part of Thomson appeared 
during his life. But what if he had himself given to the world, 
through the channel of the regular trade, and for his own be- 
hoof, in Parts, or all at once, Those Two Hundred and Fifty 
Songs — new and old — original and restored — with all those dis- 
quisitions, annotations, and ever so many more, themselves often 
very poetry indeed — what would the world have felt, thought, 
said, and done then ? She would at least not have believed that 
the author of the Cottar's Saturday Night was — a drunkard. 
And what would Burns have felt, thought, said, and done then ? 
He would have felt that he was turning his divine gift to a saered 
purpose — he would have thought well of himself, and in that just 
appreciation there would have been peace — he would have said 
thousands on thousands of high and noble sentiments in discourses 
and in letters, with an untroubled voice and a steady pen, the 
sweet persuasive eloquence of the happy — he would have done 
greater things than it had before entered into his heart to con- 
ceive — his drama of the Bruce would have come forth magni- 
ficent from an imagination elevated by the joy that was in his 
heart — his Scottish Georgics would have written themselves, 
and would have been pure Virgilian — Tale upon Tale, each a 
day's work or a week's, would have taken the shine out of Tarn 
o' Shanter. 

And here it is incumbent on us to record our sentiments re- 
garding Mr. Thomson's conduct towards Burns in his worst ex- 
tremity, which has not only been assailed by " anonymous scrib- 
blers," whom perhaps he may rightly regard with contempt ; 
but as he says in his letter to our esteemed friend, the ingenious 



202 THE GENIUS AND 



and energetic Robert Chambers, to " his great surprise, by some 
writers who might have been expected to possess sufficient judg- 
ment to see the matter in its true light." 

In the " melancholy letter received through Mrs. Hyslop," as 
Mr. Thomson well calls it, dated April, Burns writes, " Alas ! 
my dear Thomson, I fear it will be some time before I tune my 
lyre again. c By Babel streams I have sat and wept,' almost 
ever since I wrote you last (in February, when he thanked Mr. 

Thomson for ' a handsome elegant present to Mrs. B ,' we 

believe a worsted shawl). I have only known existence by the 
pressure of the heavy hand of sickness, and have counted time 
but by the repercussions of pain. Rheumatism, cold, and fever, 
have formed to me a terrible combination. I close my eyes in 
misery, and open them without hope." In his answer to that 
letter, dated 4th May, Mr. Thomson writes, " I need not tell 
you, my good sir, what concern your last gave me, and how 
much I sympathize in your sufferings. But do not, I beseech 
you, give yourself up to despondency, nor speak the language of 
despair. The vigor of your constitution, I trust, will soon set 
you on your feet again ; and then it is to be hoped you will see 
the wisdom of taking due care of a life so valuable to your family, 
to your friends, and to the world. Trusting that your next will 
bring agreeable accounts of your convalescence, and good spirits, 
I remain with sincere regard, yours.' 5 This is kind as it should 
be ; and the advice given to Burns is good, though perhaps, 
under the circumstances, it might just as well have been spared. 
In a subsequent letter without date, Burns writes, " I have great 
hopes that the genial influence of the approaching summer will 
set me to rights, but as yet I cannot boast of returning health. 
I have now reason to believe that my complaint is a flying gout ; 
a sad business." Then comes that most heart-rending letter, in 
which the dying Burns, in terror of a jail, implores the oan of 
live pounds — and the well-known reply. " Ever since I received 
your melancholy letter by Mrs. Hyslop, I have been ruminating 
in what manner I could endeavor to alleviate your sufferings," 
and so on. Shorter rumination than of three months might, one 
would think, have sufficed to mature some plan for the alleviation 
of such sufferings, and human ingenuity has been more severely 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 203 

taxed than it would have been in devising means to carry it into 
effect. The recollection of a letter written three years before, 
when the Poet was in high health and spirits, needed not to have 
stayed his hand. " The fear of offending your independent 
spirit," seems a bugbear indeed. " With great pleasure I 
enclose a draft for the very sum I had proposed sending ! ! 
Would I were Chancellor of the Exchequer but for one day 
for your sake ! ! ! " 

Josiah Walker, however, to whom Mr. Thomson gratefully 
refers, says, " a few days before Burns expired, he applied to 
Mr. Thomson for a loan of £5, in a note which showed the irri- 
table and distracted state of his mind, and his commendable 
judgment instantly remitted the precise sum, foreseeing that had 
he, at that moment, presumed to exceed that request, he would 
have exasperated the irritation and resentment of the haughty 
invalid, and done him more injury, by agitating his passions, than 
could be repaired by administering more largely to his wants." 
Haughty invalid! Alas ! he was humble enough now. "After 
all my boasted independence, stern necessity compels me to implore 
you for five pounds f" Call not that a pang of pride. It is the 
outcry of a wounded spirit shrinking from the last worst arrow 
of affliction. In one breath he implores succor and forgiveness 
from the man to whom he had been a benefactor. " Forgive me 
this earnestness — but the horrors of a jail have made me half 
distracted. Forgive me ! Forgive me ! " He asks no gift — he 
but begs to borrow — and trusts to the genius God had given him 
for ability to repay the loan ; nay, he encloses his last song, 
" Fairest Maid on Devon's banks," as in part payment! But 
oh ! save Robert Burns from dying in prison. What hauteur ! 
And with so " haughty an invalid," how shall a musical brother 
deal, so as not " to exasperate his irritation and resentment," 
and do him " more injury by agitating his passions, than could 
be repaired by administering more largely to his wants ? More 
largely ! Faugh ! faugh ! Foreseeing that he who was half- 
mad at the horrors of a jail, would go wholly mad were ten 
pounds sent to him instead of five, which was all " the haughty 
invalid " had implored, " with commendable judgment," accord, 
ing to Josiah Walker's philosophy of human life, George Thorn- 



204 THE GENIUS AND 



son sent " the precise sum !" And supposing it had gone into 
the pocket of the merciless haberdasher, on what did Josiah 
Walker think would " the haughty invalid" have subsisted then 
« — how paid for lodging without board by the melancholy Sol- 
way-side 1 

Mr. Thomson's champion proceeds to say — " Burns had all 
the unmanageable pride of Samuel Johnson, and if the latter 
threw away with indignation the new shoes lohich had been placed 
at his chamber door, secretly and collectively by his companions, 
the former would have been still more ready to resent any pecu- 
niary donation which a single individual, after his peremp- 
tory prohibition, should avowedly have dared to insult him with." 
InBoswell we read— " Mr. Bateman's lectures were so excellent 
that Johnson used to come and get them at second-hand from 
Taylor, till his poverty being so extreme, that his shoes were 
worn out, and his feet appeared through them, he saw that his 
humiliating condition was perceived by the Christ-Church men, 
and he came no more. He was too proud to accept of money, 
and somelody having set a pair of new shoes at his door, he 
threw them away with indignation." Hall, Master of Pem- 
broke, in a note on this passage, expresses strong doubts of 
Johnson's poverty at college having been extreme ; and Croker, 
with his usual accuracy, says, " authoritatively and circumstan- 
tially as this story is told, there is good reason for disbelieving it 
altogether. Taylor was admitted Commoner of Christ-Church, 
June 27, 1720 ; Johnson left Oxford six months before." Sup- 
pose it true. Had Johnson found the impudent cub in the act of 
depositing the eleemosynary shoes, he infallibly would have 
knocked him down with fist or folio as clean as he afterwards did 
Osborne. But Mr. Thomson was no such cub, nor did he stand 
relatively to Burns in the same position as such cub to Johnson. 
He owed Burns much money — though Burns would not allow 
himself to think so ; and had he expostulated, with open heart 
and hand, with the Bard on his obstinate- — -he might have kindly 
said foolish and worse than foolish disregard not only of his own 
interest, but of the comfort of his wife and family— had he gone 
to Dumfries for the sole purpose — who can doubt that " his jus- 
tice and generosity " would have been crowned with success ? 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 205 

Who but Josiah Walker could have said, that Burns would 
have then thought himself insulted ? Resent a " pecuniary 
donation " indeed ! What is a donation ? Johnson tells us in 
the words of South ; " After donation there is an absolute change 
and alienation made of the property of the thing given ; which, 
being alienated, a man has no more to do with it than with a 
thing bought with another's money.' 7 It was Burns who made a 
donation to Thomson of a hundred and twenty songs. 

All mankind must agree with Mr. Lockhart when he says — 
" Why Burns, who was of opinion, when he wrote his letter to 
Mr. Carfrae, that < no profits were more honorable than those of 
the labors of a man of genius/ and whose own notions of inde- 
pendence had sustained no shock in the receipt of hundreds of 
pounds from Creech, should have spurned the suggestion of pe- 
cuniary recompense from Mr. Thomson, it is no easy matter to 
explain ; nor do I profess to understand why Mr. Thomson took 
so little pains to argue the matter in limine with the poet, and 
convince him that the time which he himself considered as fairly 
entitled to be paid for by a common bookseller, ought of right to 
be valued and acknowledged by the editor and proprietor of a 
book containing both songs and music." We are not so much 
blaming the backwardness of Thomson in the matter of the songs, 
as we are exposing the blather of Walker in the story of the 
shoes. Yet something there is in the nature of the whole trans- 
action that nobody can stomach. W T e think we have in a great 
measure explained how it happened that Burns " spurned the 
suggestion of pecuniary recompense ;" and bearing our remarks 
in mind, look for a moment at the circumstances of the case. 
Mr. Thomson, in his first letter, September, 1792, says, "Profit 
is quite a secondary consideration with us, and we are resolved to 
spare neither pains nor expense on the publication." " We 
shall esteem your poetical assistance a particular favor, besides 
paying any reasonable price you shall please demand for it." 
And would Robert Burns condescend to receive money for his 
contributions to a work in honor of Scotland, undertaken by men 
with whom " profit was quite a secondary consideration ?" Im- 
possible. In July, 1793, when Burns had been for nine months 
enthusiastically co-operating in a great national work, and had 



206 THE GENIUS AND 



proved that he would carry it on to a triumphant close, Mr. 
Thomson writes—" I cannot express how much I am obliged to 
you for the exquisite new songs you are sending me ; but thanks, 
my friend, are a poor return for what you have done. As I 
shall be benefited by the publication, you must suffer me to in- 
close a small mark of my gratitude, and to repeat it afterwards 
when I find it convenient. Do not return it — for by heaven if 
you do, our correspondence is at an end." A bank-note for five 
pounds ! " In the name of the prophet — Figs ! Burns, with a 
proper feeling, retained the trifle, but forbad the repetition of it; 
and everybody must see, at a glance, that such a man could not 
have done otherwise — for it would have been most degrading in- 
deed had he shown himself ready to accept a five pound note 
when it might happen to suit the convenience of an Editor. His 
domicile was not in Grub-street. 

Mr. Walker, still further to soothe Mr. Thomson's feelings, 
sent him an extract from a letter of Lord Woodhouselee's — " I 
am glad that you have embraced the occasion which lay in your 
way of doing full justice to Mr. George Thomson, who I agree 
with you in thinking, was most harshly and illiberally treated by 
an anonymous dull calumniator. I have always regarded Mr. 
Thomson as a man of great worth and most respectable charac- 
ter ; and I have every reason to believe that poor Burns felt 
himself as much indebted to his good counsels and active friend- 
ship as a man, as the 'public is sensible he was to his good taste and 
judgment as a critic." Mr. Thomson, in now giving, for the first 
time, this extract to the public, says, " Of the unbiassed opinion 
of such a highly respectable gentleman and accomplished wri- 
ter as Lord Woodhouselee, I certainly feel not a little proud. 
It is of itself more than sufficient to silence the calumnies by 
which I have been assailed, first anonymously, and afterwards, 
to my great surprise, by some writers who might have been ex- 
pected to possess sufficient judgment to see the matter in its true 
light." He has reason to feel proud of his Lordship's good opi- 
nion, and on the ground of his private character he deserved it. 
But the assertions contained in the extract have no bearing 
whatever on the question, and they are entirely untrue. Lord 
Woodhouselee could have had no authority for believing, " that 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 207 

poor Burns felt himself indebted to Mr. Thomson's good counsels 
and active friendship as a man." Mr. Thomson, a person of no 
influence or account, had it not in his power to exert any " active 
friendship " for Burns — and as to " good counsels," it is not to be 
believed for a moment, that a modest man like him, who had 
never interchanged a word with Burns, would have presumed 
to become his Mentor. This is putting him forward in the high 
character of Burns's benefactor, not only in his worldly con- 
cerns, but in his moral well-being; a position which of himself 
he never could have dreamt of claiming, and from which he 
must, on a moment's consideration, with pain inexpressible re- 
coil. Neither is " the public sensible " that Burns was " indebt- 
ed to his good taste and judgment as a critic." The public 
kindly regard Mr. Thomson, and think that in his correspondence 
with Burns he makes a respectable figure. But Burns repudi- 
ated most of his critical strictures ; and the worthy Clerk of 
the Board of Trustees does indeed frequently fall into sad mis- 
takes, concerning alike poetry, music, and painting. Lord 
Woodhouselee's " unbiassed opinion," then, so far from being of 
itself " sufficient to silence the calumnies of ignorant assailants, 
&c," is not worth a straw. 

Mr. Thomson, in his five pound letter, asks — "Pray, my good 
sir, is it not possible for you to muster a volume of poetry ?" Why, 
with the assistance of Messrs. Johnson and Thomson, it would 
have been possible ; and then Burns might have called in his 
"Jolly Beggars." "If too much trouble to you," continues 
Mr. Thomson, " in the present state of your health, some literary 
friend might be found here who would select and arrange your 
manuscripts, and take upon him the task of editor. In the 
meantime, it could be advertised to be published by subscrip- 
tion. Do not shun this mode of obtaining the value of your 
labor ; remember Pope published the Iliad by subscription." 
Why, had not Burns published his own poems by subscription ! 
All this seems the strangest mockery ever heard of; yet there 
can be no doubt that it was written not only with a serious face, 
but with a kind heart. But George Thomson at that time was 
almost as poor a man as Robert Burns. Allan Cuninghame, a 
man of genius and virtue, in his interesting Life of Burns, has in 



208 THE GENIUS AND 



his characteristic straight- forward style put the matter — in as 
far as regards the money remittance — in its true light, and all 
Mr. Thomson's friends should be thankful to him — " Thomson 
instantly complied with the request of Burns ; he borrowed a 
five-pound note from Cunningham (a draft), and sent it saying, 
he had made up his mind to inclose the identical sum the poet 
had asked for, when he received his letter. For this he has 
been sharply censured ; and his defence is, that he was afraid of 
sending more, lest he should offend the pride of the poet, who 
was uncommonly sensitive in pecuniary matters. A better de- 
fence is Thomson's own poverty ; only one volume of his splen- 
did work was then published ; his outlay had been beyond his 
means, and very small sums of money had come in to cover his 
large expenditure. Had he been richer, his defence would have 
heen a difficult matter. When Burns made the stipulation, his 
hopes were high, and the dread of hunger or of the jail was far 
from his thoughts ; he imagined that it became genius to refuse 
money in a work of national importance. But his situation 
grew gloomier as he wrote ; he had lost nearly his all in Ellis- 
land, and was obliged to borrow small sums, which he found a 
difficulty in repaying. That he was in poor circumstances was 
well known to the world ; and had money been at Thomson's 
disposal, a way might have been found of doing the poet good by 
stealth : he sent five pounds, because he could not send ten, and 
it would have saved him from some sarcastic remarks, and some 
pangs of heart, had he said so at once." 

Mr. Thomson has attempted a defence of himself about once 
every seven years, but has always made the matter worse, by 
putting it on wrong grounds. In a letter to that other Arcadian, 
Josiah Walker, he says- — many years ago — " Now, the fact is, 
that notwithstanding the united labors of all the men of genius 
who have enriched my Collection, I am not even yet compensated 
for the precious time consumed by me in poring over musty vo- 
lumes, and in corresponding with every amateur and poet, by whose 
means I expected to make any valuable addition to our national 
music and song ;—for the exertion and money it cost me to obtain 
accompaniments from the greatest masters of harmony in Vien- 
na ; and for the sums paid to engravers, printers, and others.' 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 209 

Let us separate the items of this account. The money laid out 
by him must stand by itself — and for that outlay, he had then 
been compensated by the profits of the sale of the Collection. 
Those profits, we do not doubt, had been much exaggerated by 
public opinion, but they had then been considerable and have 
since been great. Our undivided attention has therefore to be 
turned to " his precious time consumed," and to its inadequate 
compensation. And the first question that naturally occurs to 
every reader to ask himself is — " in what sense are we to take 
the terms i time,' < precious,' and ' consumed V " Inasmuch as 
" time " is only another word for life, it is equally " precious" to 
all men. Take it then to mean leisure hours, in which men seek 
for relaxation and enjoyment. Mr. Thomson tells us that he was, 
from early youth, an enthusiast in music and in poetry ; and it 
puzzles us to conceive what he means by talking of " his precious 
time being consumed" in such studies. To an enthusiast, a 
" musty volume " is a treasure beyond the wealth of Ind — to 
pore over " musty volumes " sweet as to gaze on melting eyes — 
he hugs them to his heart. They are their own exceeding great 
reward — and we cannot listen to any claim for pecuniary com- 
pensation. Then who ever heard, before or since, of an enthu- 
siast in poetry avowing before the world, that he had not been 
sufficiently compensated in money, " for the precious time con- 
sumed by him in corresponding with Poets ? " Poets are prover- 
bially an irritable race ; still there is something about them that 
makes them very engaging — and we cannot bring ourselves to 
think that George Thomson's " precious time consumed " in cor- 
responding with Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Campbell, Joanna 
Baillie, and the Ettrick Shepherd, deserved " compensation." As 
to amateurs, we mournfully grant they are burthensome ; yet 
even that burthen may uncomplainingly be borne by an Editor 
who " expects by their means to make any valuable addition to 
our national music and song ;" and it cannot be denied, that the 
creatures have often good ears, and turn off tolerable verses. 
Finally, if by " precious " he means valuable, in a Politico Eco- 
nomical sense, we do not see how Mr. Thomson's time could have 
been consumed more productively to himself ; nor indeed how he 
could have made any money at all by a different employment of 
15 



210 THE GENIUS AND 



it. In every sense, therefore, in which the words are construed, 
they are equally absurd ; and all who read them are forced to 
think of one whose " precious time was indeed consumed " — to 
his fatal loss — the too generous, the self-devoted Burns — but for 
whose " uncompensated exertions, 55 " The Melodies of Scotland " 
would have been to the Editor a ruinous concern, in place of one 
which for nearly half a century must have been yielding him a 
greater annual income than the Poet would have enjoyed had he 
been even a Supervisor. 

Mr. Thomson has further put forth in his letter to Robert Chal- 
mers, and not now for the first time, this most injudicious defence. 
" Had I been a selfish or avaricious man, I had a fair opportuni- 
ty, upon the death of the poet, to put money in my pocket ; for 
I might then have published, for my own behoof, all the beauti- 
ful lyrics he had written for me, the original manuscripts of which 
were in my possession. But instead of doing this, I was no 
sooner informed that the friends of the poet 5 s family had come to 
a resolution to collect his works, and to publish them, for the 
benefit of the family, and that they thought it of importance to 
include my MSS. as being likely, from their number, their novel- 
ty, and their beauty, to prove an attraction to subscribers, than I 
felt it my duty to put them at once in possession of all the songs, 
and of the correspondence between the poet and myself; and 
accordingly, through Mr. John Syme of Ryedale, I transmitted 
the whole to Dr. Currie, who had been prevailed on, immensely 
to the advantage of Mrs. Burns and her children, to take on him- 
self the task of editor. For this surrendering the manuscripts, 
I received both verbally and in writing, the warm thanks of the 
trustees for the family — Mr. John Syme and Mr. Gilbert Burns 
— who considered what I had done as a fair return for the poet's 
generosity of conduct to me. 55 Of course he retained the exclu- 
sive right of publishing the songs with the music in his Collec- 
tion. Now, what if he had refused to surrender the manuscripts ? 
The whole world would have accused him of robbing the widow 
and orphan, and he would have been hooted out of Scotland, 
George Thomson, rather than have done so, would have suffered 
himself to be pressed to death between two mill-stones ; and yet 
he not only instances his having "surrendered the MSS. as a 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 211 

proof of the calumnious nature of the abuse with which he had 
been assailed by anonymous scribblers, but is proud of the thanks 
of "the trustees of the family, who considered what I had done 
as a fair return for the poet's generosity of conduct to me." 
Setting aside, then, " the calumnies of anonymous scribblers," 
with one and all of which we are unacquainted, we have shown 
that Josiah Walker ; in his foolish remarks on this affair, whereby 
he outraged the common feelings of humanity, left his friend just 
where he stood before — that Lord Woodhouselee knew nothing 
whatever about the matter, and in his good nature has made as- 
sertions absurdly untrue — that Mr. Thomson's own defence of 
himself is in all respects an utter failure, and mainly depends on 
the supposition of a case unexampled in a Christian land — that 
Lockhart with unerring finger has indicated where the fault lay— 
and that Cuninghame has accounted for it by a reason that with 
candid judges must serve to reduce it to one of a very pardona- 
ble kind ; the avowal of which from the first, would have saved a 
worthy man from some unjust obloquy, and at least as much unde- 
served commendation — the truth being now apparent to all, that 
H his poverty, not his will, consented " to secure on the terms of 
non-payment, a hundred and twenty songs from the greatest 
lyrical poet of his country, who during the years he was thus lav- 
ishing away the effusions of his matchless genius, without fee or 
reward, was in a state bordering on destitution, and as the pen 
dropt from his hand, did not leave sufficient to defray the expen- 
ses of a decent funeral. 

We come now to contemplate his dying days ; and mournful 
as the contemplation is, the close of many an illustrious life has 
been far more distressing, involved in far thicker darkness, and 
far heavier storms. From youth he had been visited — we shall 
not say haunted — by presentiments of an early death ; he knew 
well that the profound melancholy that often settled down upon 
his whole being, suddenly changing day into night, arose from 
his organization ; — and it seems as if the finest still bordered on 
disease — disease in his case perhaps hereditary — for his father 
was often sadder than even " the toil-worn cottar " needed to be, 
and looked like a man subject to inward trouble. His character 
was somewhat stern ; and we can believe that in its austerity he 



2J2 THE GENIUS AND 



found a safeguard against passion, that nevertheless may shake 
the life it cannot wreck. But the son wanted the father's firm- 
ness ; and in his veins there coursed more impetuous blood. The 
very fire of genius consumed him, coming and going in fit- 
ful flashes ; his genius itself may almost be called a passion, so 
vehement was it, and so turbulent — though it had its scenes of 
blissful quietude ; his heart too seldom suffered itself to be at 
rest ; many a fever travelled through his veins ; his calmest 
nights were liable to be broken in upon by the worst of dreams — 
waking dreams from which there is no deliverance in a sudden 
start — of which the misery is felt to be no delusion — which are 
not dispelled by the morning light, but accompany their victim 
as he walks out into the day, and among the dew, and surround- 
ed as he is with the beauty of rejoicing nature, tempt him to 
curse the day he was born. 

Yet let us not call the life of Burns unhappy — nor at its close 
shut our eyes to the manifold blessings showered by heaven on 
the Poet's lot. Many of the mental sufferings that helped most 
to wear him out, originated in his own restless nature — " by pru- 
dent, cautious, self-control " he might have subdued some and 
tempered others — better regulation was within his power — and, 
like all men, he paid the penalty of neglect of duty, or of its 
violation. But what loss is hardest to bear ? The loss of the 
beloved. All other wounds are slight to those of the affections. 
Let Fortune do her worst — so that Death be merciful. Burns 
went to his own grave without having been commanded to look 
down into another's where all was buried. " I have lately drunk 
deep of the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed me of my 
only daughter and darling child, and that at a distance too, and 
so rapidly, as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to 
her." The flower withered, and he wept — but his four pretty 
boys were soon dancing again in their glee — their mother's heart 
was soon composed again to cheerfulness — and her face without 
a shadow. Anxiety for their sakes did indeed keep preying on 
his heart ; — but what would that anxiety have seemed to him, 
had he been called upon to look back upon it in anguish because 
they were not ? Happiness too great for this earth ! If in a 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 213 

dream for one short hour restored, that would have been like an 
hour in heaven. 

Burns had not been well for a twelvemonth ; and though no- 
body seems even then to have thought him dying, on the return 
of spring, which brought him no strength, he knew that his days 
were numbered. Intense thought, so it be calm, is salutary to 
life. It is emotion that shortens our days by hurrying life's pul- 
sations — till the heart can no more, and runs down like a disor- 
dered time-piece. We said nobody seems to have thought him 
dying ; — yet after the event everybody, on looking back on it, 
remembered seeing death in his face. It is when thinking of 
those many months of decline and decay, that we feel pity and 
sorrow for his fate, and that along with them other emotions will 
arise, without our well knowing towards whom, or by what name 
they should be called, but partaking of indignation, and shame, 
and reproach, as if some great wrong had been done, and might 
have been rectified before death came to close the account. Not 
without blame somewhere could such a man have been so neg- 
lected — so forgotten — so left alone to sicken and die. 

" Oh, Scotia ! my dear, my native soil, 

For whom my warmest wish to heaven is sent ! 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content !" 

No son of Scotland did ever regard her with more fiilial affec- 
tion — did ever in strains so sweet sing of the scenes " that make 
her loved at home, revered abroad " — and yet his mother 
stretched not out her hand to sustain — when it was too late to 
save — her own Poet as he was sinking into an untimely grave. 
But the dying man complained not of her ingratitude — he loved 
her too well to the last to suspect her of such sin — there was 
nothing for him to forgive — and he knew that he would have a 
place for ever in her memory. Her rulers were occupied with 
great concerns — in which all thoughts of self were merged ! and 
therefore well might they forget her Poet, who was but a cottar's 
son and a gauger. In such forgetfulness they were what other 
rulers have been, and will be, — and Coleridge lived to know that 
the great ones of his own land could be as heartless in his own 



214 THE GENIUS AND 



case as the " Scotch nobility p in that of Burns, for whose brows 
his youthful genius wove a wreath of scorn. " The rapt one of 
the godlike forehead, the heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth " — 
but who among them cared for the long self- seclusion of the 
white-headed sage — for his sick bed, or his grave ? 

Turn we then from the Impersonation named Scotland — from 
her rulers — from her nobility and gentry — to the personal 
friends of Burns. Could they have served him in his straits 1 
And how 1 If they could, then were they bound to do so by a 
stricter obligation than lay upon any other party ; and if they 
had the will as well as the power, 'twould have been easy to find 
a way. The duties of friendship are plain, simple, sacred— 
and to perform them is delightful ; yet, so far as we can see, 
they were not performed here — if they were, let us have the 
names of the beneficent who visited Burns every other day dur- 
ing the months disease had deprived him of all power to follow 
his calling ? Who insisted on helping to keep the family in 
comfort till his strength might be restored ? For example, to 
pay his house rent for a year ? Mr. Syme, of Ryedale, told 
Dr. Currie, that Burns had " many firm friends in Dumfries," 
who would not have suffered the haberdasher to put him into 
jail, and that his were the fears of a man in delirium. Did not 
those " firm friends " know that he was of necessity very poor ? 
And did any one of them ofFer to lend him thirty shillings to 
pay for his three weeks' lodgings at the Brow ? He was not in 
delirium — till within two days of his death. Small sums he had 
occasionally borrowed and repaid ; but from people as poor as 
himself; such as kind Craig, the schoolmaster, to whom, at his 
death, he owed a pound — never from the more opulent townfolk 
or the gentry in the neighborhood, of not one of whom is it re- 
corded that he or she accommodated the dying Poet with a loan 
sufficient to pay for a week's porridge and milk. Let us have 
no more disgusting palaver about his pride. His heart would 
have melted within him at any act of considerate friendship 
done to his family ; and so far from feeling that by accepting it 
he had become a pauper, he would have recognized in the doer 
of it a brother, and taken him into his heart. And had he not 
in all the earth, one single such Friend ? His brother Gilbert 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 215 

was struggling with severe difficulties at Mossgiel, and was then 
unable to assist him ; and his excellent cousin at Montrose had 
enough to do to maintain his own family ; but as soon as he 
knew how matters stood, he showed that the true Burns 5 blood 
was in his heart, and after the Poet's death, was as kind as man 
could be to his widow and children. 

What had come over Mrs. Dunlop that she should have 
seemed to have forgotten or forsaken him 1 " These many 
months you have been two packets in my debt — what sin of 
ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend I 
am utterly at a loss to guess ! Alas ! Madam, ill can I afford, 
at this time, to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my 
pleasures. * * * I had scarcely begun to recover 
from that shock (the death of his little daughter), when I be- 
came myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and 
long the die spun doubtful ; until, after many weeks of a sick 
bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl 
across my room, and once, indeed, have been before my own 
door in the street." No answer came ; and three months after 
he wrote from the Brow, " Madam — I have written you so often 
without receiving any answer, that I would not trouble you 
again but for the circumstances in which I am. An illness 
which has long hung about me, in all probability will speedily 
send me beyond that bourne whence no traveller returns. Your 
friendship, with which for many years you honored me, was a 
friendship dearest to my soul. Your conversation, and espe- 
cially your correspondence, were at once highly entertaining 
and instructive. With what pleasure did I use to break up the 
seal ! The remembrance yet adds one pulse more to my poor 
palpitating heart. Farewell. R. B." Currie says, "Burns 
had the pleasure of receiving a satisfactory explanation of his 
friend's silence, and an assurance of the continuance of her 
friendship to his widow and children ; an assurance that has 
been amply fulfilled. That " satisfactory explanation" should 
have been given to the world — it should be given yet — for with- 
out it such incomprehensible silence must continue to seem 
cruel ; and it is due to the memory of one whom Burns loved 



216 THE GENIUS AND 



and honored to the last, to vindicate on her part the faithfulness 
of the friendship which preserves her name. 

Maria Riddel, a lady of fine talents and accomplishments, and 
though somewhat capricious in the consciousness of her mental 
and personal attractions, yet of most amiable disposition, and 
of an affectionate and tender heart, was so little aware of the 
condition of the Poet, whose genius she could so well appreciate, 
that only a few weeks before his death, when he could hardly 
crawl, he had by letter to decline acceding to her " desire that 
he would go to the birth-day assembly, on the 4th June, to show 
his loyalty !" Alas ! he was fast " wearin' awa to the land o' 
the leal ;" and after the lapse of a few weeks, that lady gay, 
herself in poor health, and saddened out of such vanities by 
sincerest sorrow, was struck with his appearance on entering 
the room. " The stamp of death was imprinted on his features. 
He seemed already touching the brink of eternity. His first 
salutation was — ' Well, Madam, have you any commands for 
the next world V " The best men have indulged in such sallies, 
on the brink of the grave. Nor has the utterance of words like 
these, as life's taper was flickering in the socket, been felt to 
denote a mood of levity unbecoming a creature about to go to 
his account. On the contrary, there is something very affect- 
ing in the application of such formulas of speech as had been 
of familiar use all his days, on his passage through the shadow 
of time, now that his being is about to be liberated into the 
light of eternity, where our mortal language is heard not, and 
spirit communicates with spirit through organs not made of clay, 
having dropped the body like a garment. 

In that interview, the last recorded, and it is recorded well — 
pity so much should have been suppressed — " he spoke of his 
death without any of the ostentation of philosophy, but with 
firmness as well as feeling, as an event likely to happen very 
soon, and which gave him concern chiefly from leaving his poor 
children so young and unprotected, and his wife in so interesting 
a situation, in hourly expectation of lying in of a fifth." Yet, 
during the whole afternoon, he was cheerful, even gay, and dis- 
posed for pleasantry ; such is the power of the human voice 
and the human eye over the human heart, almost to the re- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 217 

suscitation of drowned hope, when they are both suffused with 
affection, when tones are as tender as tears, yet can better 
hide the pity that ever and anon will be gushing from the lids 
of grief. He expressed deep contrition for having been betrayed 
by his inferior nature and vicious sympathy with the dissolute, 
into impurities in verse, which he knew were floating about 
among people of loose lives, and might on his death be collected 
to the hurt of his moral character. Never had Burns been 
" hired minstrel of voluptuous blandishment," nor by such un- 
guarded freedom of speech had he ever sought to corrupt ; but 
emulating the ribald wit and coarse humor of some of the worst 
old ballants current among the lower orders of the people, of 
whom the moral and religious are often tolerant of indecencies 
to a strange degree, he felt that he had sinned against his ge- 
nius. A miscreant, aware of his poverty, had made him an 
offer of fifty pounds for a collection, which he repelled with the 
horror of remorse. Such things can hardly be said to have 
existence ; the polluted perishes, or shovelled aside from the 
socialities of mirthful men, are nearly obsolete, except among 
those whose thoughtlessness is so great as to be sinful, among 
whom the distinction ceases between the weak and the wicked. 
From such painful thoughts he turned to his poetry, that had 
every year been becoming dearer and dearer to the people, and 
he had comfort in the assurance that it was pure and good ; and 
he wished to live a little longer that he might mend his Songs, 
for through them he felt he would survive in the hearts of the 
dwellers in cottage-homes all over Scotland ; and in the fond 
imagination of his heart Scotland to him was all the world. 

" He spoke of his death without any of the ostentation of phi- 
losophy," and perhaps without any reference to religion ; for 
dying men often keep their profoundest thoughts to themselves, 
except in the chamber in which they believe they are about to 
have the last look of the objects of their earthly love, and there 
they give them utterance in a few words of hope and trust. 
While yet walking about in the open air, and visiting their friends, 
they continue to converse about the things of this life in lan- 
guage so full of animation, that you might think, but for some- 
thing about their eyes, that they are unconscious of their doom ; 



218 THE GENIUS AND 



and so at times they are ; for the customary pleasure of social 
intercourse does not desert them ; the sight of others well and 
happy beguiles them of the mournful knowledge that their own 
term has nearly expired, and in that oblivion they are cheerful 
as the persons seem to be who for their sakes assume a smiling 
aspect in spite of struggling tears. So was it with Burns at the 
Brow. But he had his Bible with him in his lodgings, and he 
read it almost continually — often when seated on a bank, from 
which he had difficulty in rising without assistance, for his weak- 
ness was extreme, and in his emaciation he was like a ghost. 
The fire of his eye was not dimmed — indeed fever had lighted 
it up beyond even its natural brightness ; and though his voice, 
once so various, was now hollow, his discourse was still that of 
a Poet. To the last he loved the sunshine, the grass, and the 
flowers ; to the last he had a kind look and word for the pass- 
ers-by, who all knew it was Burns. Laboring men, on their 
way from work, would step aside to the two or three houses 
called the Brow, to know if there was any hope of his life ; and 
it is not to be doubted that devout people remembered him, who 
had written the Cottar's Saturday Night, in their prayers. His 
sceptical doubts no longer troubled him ; they had never been 
more than shadows ; and he had at last the faith of a confiding 
Christian. We are not even to suppose that his heart was always 
disquieted within him because of the helpless condition of his 
widow and orphans. That must have been indeed with him a 
dismal day on which he wrote three letters about them so full of 
anguish ; but to give vent to grief in passionate outcries usually 
assuages xt, and tranquillity sometimes steals upon despair. His 
belief that he was so sunk in debt was a delusion — not of deli- 
rium, but of the fear that is in love. And comfort must have 
come to him in the conviction that his country would not suffer 
the family of her Poet to be in want. As long as he had health 
they were happy, though poor ; as long as he was alive, they 
were not utterly destitute. That on his death they would be 
paupers, was a dread that could have had no abiding place in a 
heart that knew how it had beat for Scotland, and in the power 
of genius had poured out all its love on her fields and her people. 
His heart was pierced with the same wounds that extort lamen- 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 210 

tations from the death-beds of ordinary men, thinking of what 
will become of wife and children ; but like the pouring of oil 
upon them by some gracious hand, must have been the frequent 
recurrence of the belief — " On my death people will pity them, 
and care for them for my name's sake." Some little matter of 
money he knew he should leave behind him — the two hundred 
pounds he had lent to his brother ; and it sorely grieved him to 
think that Gilbert might be ruined by having to return it. What 
brotherly affection was there ! They had not met for a good 
many years ; but personal intercourse was not required to sus- 
tain their friendship. At the Brow often must the dying Poet 
have remembered Mossgiel. 

On the near approach of death he returned to his own house, 
in a spring-cart ; and having left it at the foot of the street, he could 
just totter up to his door. The last words his hand had strength 
to put on paper were to his wife's father, and were written pro- 
bably within an hour of his return home. " My dear Sir— Do, 
for heaven's sake, send Mrs. Armour here immediately. My 
wife is hourly expected to be put to bed ! Good God ! what 
a situation for her to be in, poor girl, without a friend ! I 
returned from sea-bathing quarters to-day; and my medical 
friends would almost persuade me that I am better ; but I 
think and feel that my strength is so gone, that the disorder 
will prove fatal to me. Your son-in-law, R. B." That is not 
the letter of a man in delirium ; nor was the letter written a 
few days before from the Brow to " my dearest love." But 
next day he was delirious, and the day after too, though on 
being spoken to he roused himself into collected and composed 
thought, and was, ever and anon, for a few minutes himself — 
Robert Burns. In his delirium there was nothing to distress the 
listeners and the lookers on ; words were heard that to them had 
no meaning ; mistakings made by the parting spirit among its 
language now in confusion breaking up ; and sometimes words 
of trifling import about trifling things — about incidents and 
events unnoticed in their happening, but now strangely cared 
for in their final repassing before the closed eyes just ere the 
dissolution of the dream of a dream. Nor did his death-bed 
want for affectionate and faithful service. The few who were 



220 THE GENIUS AND 



privileged to tend it did so tenderly and reverently — now by the 
side of the sick wife, and now by that of the dying husband. 
Maxwell, a kind physician, came often to gaze in sadness where 
no skill could relieve. Findlater, supervisor of excise, sat by his 
bed-side the night before he died ; and Jessie Lewars, daughter 
and sister of a gauger, was his sick nurse. Had he been her 
own father, she could not have done her duty with a more per- 
fect devotion of her whole filial heart — and her name will never 
die, " here eternized on earth" by the genius of the Poet who, 
for all her Christian kindness to him and his, had long cherished 
toward her the tenderest gratitude. His children had been taken 
care of by friends, and were led in to be near him, now that his 
hour was come. His wife in her own bed knew it, as soon as 
her Robert was taken from her ; and the great Poet of the Scot- 
tish people, who had been born " in the auld clay biggin " on a 
stormy winter night, died in an humble tenement on a bright 
summer morning, among humble folk, who composed his body, 
and according to custom strewed around it flowers brought from 
their own gardens. 

Great was the grief of the people for their Poet's death. They 
felt that they had lost their greatest man ; and it is no exagge- 
ration to say that Scotland was saddened on the day of his fune- 
ral. It is seldom that tears are shed even close to the grave 
beyond the inner circle that narrows round it ; but that day 
there were tears in the eyes of many far off at their work, and 
that night there was silence in thousands of cottages that had 
so often heard his songs — how sweeter far than any other, 
whether mournfully or merrily to old accordant melodies they 
won their way into the heart ! The people had always loved 
him ; they best understood his character, its strength and its 
weakness. Not among them at any time had it been harshly 
judged, and they allowed him now the sacred privileges of the 
grave. The religious have done so ever since, pitying more 
than condemning, nor afraid to praise ; for they have confessed 
to themselves, that had there been a window in their breasts as 
there was in that of Burns, worse sights might have been seen — 
a darker revelation. His country charged herself with the 
care of them he had loved so well, and the spirit in which she 



CHARACTER OF BURNS. 221 

performed her duty is the best proof that her neglect — if neglect 
at any time there were — of her Poet's well-being had not been 
wilful, but is to be numbered with those omissions incident to .all 
human affairs, more to be lamented than blamed, and if not 
to be forgotten, surely to be forgiven, even by the nations 
who may have nothing to reproach themselves with in their con- 
duct towards any of their great poets. England, " the foremost 
land of all this world," was not slack to join in her sister's sor- 
row, and proved the sincerity of her own, not by barren words, 
but fruitful deeds, and best of all by fervent love and admiration 
of the poetry that had opened up so many delightful views into 
the character and condition of our " bold peasantry, their coun- 
try's pride," worthy compatriots with her own, and exhibiting 
in different Manners the same national Virtues. 

No doubt wonder at a prodigy had mingled in many minds 
with admiration of the ploughman's poetry ; and when they of 
their wondering found an end, such persons began to talk with 
abated enthusiasm of his genius and increased severity of his 
character, so that during intervals of silence, an under current 
of detraction was frequently heard brawling with an ugly noise. 
But the main stream soon ran itself clear ; and Burns has no 
abusers now out of the superannuated list ; out of it — better still 
— he has no patrons. In our youth we have heard him spoken 
of by the big- wigs with exceeding condescension ; now the 
tallest men know that to see his features rightly they must look 
up. Shakspeare, Spencer, and Milton, are unapproachable; 
but the present era is the most splendid in the history of our 
poetry — in England beginning with Cowper, in Scotland with 
Burns. Original and racy, each in his own land is yet unex- 
celled ; immovably they both keep their places — their inherit- 
ance is sure. Changes wide and deep, for better and for worse, 
have been long going on in town and country. There is now 
among the people more education — more knowledge than at 
any former day. Their worldly condition is more prosperous, 
while there is still among them a deep religious spirit. By that 
spirit alone can they be secured in the good, and saved from the 
evil of knowledge ; but the spirit of poetry is akin to that of re- 
ligion, and the union of the two is in no human composition more 



222 THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 

powerful than in " the Cottar's Saturday Night." " Let who 
may have the making of the laws give me the making of the 
ballads of a people," is a profound saying ; and the truth it 
somewhat paradoxically expresses is in much as applicable to a 
cultivated and intellectual as to a rude and imaginative age. 
From our old traditional ballads we know what was dearest to 
the hearts and souls of the people. How much deeper must be 
the power over them of the poems and songs of such a man as 
Burns, of himself alone superior in genius to all those nameless 
minstrels, and of a nobler nature ; and yet more endeared to 
them by pity for the sorrows that clouded the close of his life. 



THE END. 




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